


The Wolves of the Valley

by joongz



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn-ish, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Werewolves, hongjoong thinks yeosang is an insufferable (hot) nerd, hongjoong's famous last words "no i don't like him", not a/b/o, pp - or as my friend would say poetic porn, some descriptions of injuries and blood and fighting, subtle fantasy, yeosang is indeed an insufferable (hot) nerd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:28:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27841501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joongz/pseuds/joongz
Summary: On a summery full moon night, Hongjoong learns about the legends of the wolves. He doesn't believe them until the next morning, when their town has fallen victim to a wolf attack. Mingi drags him into the woods to find out more about these legends, and soon Hongjoong is spun into a world of fantastical creatures.In the center of it all seems to stand an old acquaintance of Hongjoong, one that brings back complicated memories and feelings: Yeosang.
Relationships: Choi San/Song Mingi, Kang Yeosang/Kim Hongjoong
Comments: 24
Kudos: 102





	1. i.

**Author's Note:**

> hello!!
> 
> i wanted to write hongsang for a while but had no inspiration, so i decided to try out the good old classic werewolves au. originally this was meant to be posted wayyy earlier but it also wasn't meant to be so long, so here we goo
> 
> also, i took this as a chance to try to write smut for the first time, but please look away i have no idea what i'm doing lmao
> 
> i recommend listening to "beautiful undone" by laura doggett and "two men in love" by the irrepressibles!! i've been listening to them on loop while writing this hehe
> 
> happy reading!!^^

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The worst has already happened,_ he thinks as he glares at Yeosang. _The nerve of him._

_“You look beautiful undone_

_My boy of blue._

_I'm looking down and my heart's connected,_

_I'm feeling love from a different view.”_

* * *

“So, that _fucking_ sucks,” states Hongjoong, drumming his fingers impatiently on the dashboard of his trashy car.

His car decided to give up life in the middle of the countryside road that connected the two small towns at each side of the valley. It’s not the first time the engine has sputtered and coughed—Hongjoong is on a first name basis with his mechanic, they could even be considered friends—but it’s the first time it has completely given up its spirit. Hongjoong managed to steer it to the side of the road, where it died.

“Yeah, no shit,” says Mingi through the line of the phone. “Everyone is here already. I have to go, it’s starting soon. Don’t die out there.”

“Man, fuck you. Don’t you think I want to be there for the screening of your short movie—?” His words are interrupted by the annoying _beep_ of the line. He rolls his eyes unkindly and throws his phone on the passenger seat. 

For a moment, he lets his head hit the headrest, and stares out at the numerous farming fields on each side of the long, straight countryside road. There are little hills on each side covered with patches of wild forest. There’s something eerie about them at night time, like a thousand little eyes are watching from inside. Hongjoong has never really liked them, though he has other reasons for that too. He remembers the abandoned house with a ‘For Sale’ sign standing on its lawn, the forest all around it like it was sheltering the house, or isolating it.

He shakes his head, dissipating the memory. There’s no reason for him to remember that.

In the distance there is a halo between two hills, where the small town lies. A not very big cluster of old cement buildings all in the color of sand underneath a sunset, green and blue window panes; the most modern buildings are the banks and the fast food resturants, the latter are a fascination for the younger people, it makes the feel more connected to the rest of the world.

“Well…” Hongjoong mutters to himself and picks up the phone again to call the tow truck.

With luck they’d leave him near the movie theatre. Mingi’s short movie, that he has worked on for the past two months, is being screened for the first time at their local movie theatre. It’s a VIP event, only the involved professors and students (and their plus-ones) are allowed in.

Now, Hongjoong is going to miss it because his car gives up in the worst moments imaginable.

Hongjoong drove out to the neighboring small town to get Mingi a personalized congratulatory cake, which sits sadly in the backseat now, the heat melting its frosting.

The tow truck service said they would take about half an hour to get out there, in the middle of nowhere. Hongjoong glares at the bright, near full moon outside, hanging low over the valley, as if it is the reason behind his misery.

Rolling down the window to get some air flowing in the confined place, Hongjoong thinks to himself that the night could not get worse. It’s possible the universe takes this as a challenge, as suddenly headlights appear behind him, bright and blinding him. He supposes the car will fly past him, but the vehicle slows down until it parks right behind Hongjoong.

The driver gets out. From what he can see they’re young, clad in all black. 

He curses inwardly when the stranger stands right by the driver’s door. It’s a familiar face that peeks down at him. Hongjoong wishes he could convince himself that he’d forgotten this boy, but he hasn’t, not at all, and it’s so staggering to see him again. A spurt of anger raises in his chest as he remembers days spent in hidden and repressed worry and agony.

Like a stray animal, appearing and disappearing in the streets at its own will, Yeosang is back, as if he never disappeared almost three years ago.

His blonde hair stands out starkly under the bright moonlight; it’s so perfectly wavy. He looks nothing, and simultaneously so painfully similar, like the boy in Hongjoong’s memories.

In his mind, frustration and sparks melt together. He tries not to notice all the subtle changes in Yeosang: his golden hair that was once the color of coal, his matured face—all sharp angles—and his well built body that’s nothing like that scrawny seventeen year old kid.

“Hey!” Yeosang greets him cheerfully. “Why are you stopping out here?”

“What do you think?” Hongjoong snaps back.

“To watch the stars?”

“What stars? The moon is too bright, it has swallowed them.”

Yeosang blinks, a small smile curling at his lips. He glances up at the sky, his sharp jawline gaining prominence from that angle. He looks at the moon with reverence.

“It does,” he mutters, “shine brightly. It’s a full moon tomorrow after all. A dangerous time to be stuck out here, alone, in the middle of nowhere.” When he looks down at Hongjoong again, there’s a strange seriousness in his eyes.

Hongjoong scoffs. “Please, what’s the worst that could happen?” he asks sarcastically.

 _The worst has already happened_ , he thinks as he glares at Yeosang. _The nerve of him._

“Have you not heard the legends of these valleys—about the wolves and the magic?”

Hongjoong tilts his head in confusion. He can’t say he is particularly interested in whatever nonsense Yeosang might have read, nor impressed by it. He supposes little has changed from the seventeen year old Yeosang that Hongjoong once knew, asking strange questions and telling even weirder stories.

“I have not,” he replies, then quickly adds, “and I don’t want to hear about them.”

“Suit yourself.” Yeosang leans against the driver’s door, watchfully glancing around.

Hongjoong waits patiently for him to leave, but when the seconds stretch out and Yeosang hasn’t moved, he lets out a very long and tired sigh.

“What are you doing?”

“Keeping you company,” Yeosang replies easily. “I figured you’ve already called a tow truck. There’s no need for you to wait for it all alone.”

“I would rather wait for it alone,” he mutters under his breath.

Yeosang smiles, glancing down. How can he stand there as if nothing ever happened?

“I can drive you to Mingi’s event, if you’d like. My car is healthy and in good conditions; plus, I was on my way near there anyway. It’s no problem at all.”

Hongjoong crosses his arms in front of his chest petulantly. He can’t deny that it’s an inviting offer. He’ll just tell the tow truck to take the car to his mechanic, he’ll text him about the incident. Jongho will not mind. But this very simple and easy solution means Hongjoong has to sit for at least half an hour in the same car as Yeosang, whom Hongjoong has a complicated and open past with. It’s not that he hates him, it’s just—Yeosang is odd, and he vanished without trace.

It’s already weird that he’s _right there_. Is he even real or just a figment of Hongjoong’s imagination?

Despite his aversion, he finds himself agreeing to Yeosang’s offer, “Alright.” Mingi would be angry if he misses out on this big event any more than he already has.

Yeosang beams.

“Excellent choice! You will _not_ regret it. My mom says I’m a really good driver,” Yeosang babbles on. _His mom_ , Hongjoong faintly recalls a memory, many years ago, of a woman with wild hair, mud and scratches on her body. She’d wandered through the forest for weeks after her husband’s death. “Seonghwa says so too. You know Seonghwa, don’t you?”

Hongjoong nods his head once, curtly.

“You know that I do,” he says vaguely. “I met him like twice.”

“Right. Right, right.” Yeosang smiles. “I forgot about that, it was a weird time.”

Hongjoong hums, forcing himself not to remember. The last thing he needs is to feel pity toward Yeosang. It’s been seven years since then.

He passes a hand through his styled hair—he spent _hours_ on it. All in vain, he supposes. Suddenly, Yeosang’s hand flies out, taking hold of Hongjoong’s wrist. His fingertips are cold, but the palm of his hand is nearly burning hot.

Hongjoong shivers, then yanks his wrist away. “What the hell, man?”

“Sorry. It’s just—You shouldn’t ruin your hair. It looks great!” Yeosang tells him. There is not an ounce of shame in his face or tone. “A lot better than that weird hair cut you had in high school.”

“ _Excuse me_?!” He can’t believe he is getting slandered by Yeosang, who arguably had the _worst_ hair anyone could possibly have during high school. “Your hair was a lot worse.”

“Hey!” Yeosang protests. Then considers it, tapping his lips thoughtfully. “I guess you’re right. I looked horrible, didn’t I?” He laughs.

Hongjoong frowns, pulling a face. This is precisely why he always avoided Yeosang, he’s too unpredictable, too strange, too nerdy—too everything. He would say Yeosang hasn’t changed a bit since high school, but he’d be lying. He has changed, naturally; they all have. He doesn’t want to study Yeosang to find out just how much he’s changed. At least, his fashion sense and hair style have changed—improved, Hongjoong would even say.

(But, since it’s been years from the last time he saw Yeosang, he wonders: is he still as shy? Does he hold back with his words, scared to be too obnoxious? Does he still hide his laughter in a room full of people? Does he still doodle in notebooks, jiggle his legs when he’s nervous, bite his nails when he’s anxious…? Does he still suffer from the strange events that happened to him when he was thirteen? Where has he been all these years? Where did he go? Where—?)

They’re now both leaning against Hongjoong’s stupid car, the cool metal against their lower backs, though the night is warm. It’s one of the first summer nights that doesn’t require one to wear a jacket, but this also means there’s mosquitoes buzzing about as cicadas sing from the trees. Across the valley, by the edge of the forest, Hongjoong can see a fire crackling, the low thump of a bass carrying over to them.

Oh, how he’s missed summer.

“Don’t you think the moon looks beautiful?” Yeosang suddenly asks.

“Sure,” Hongjoong replies, disinterested, but he looks up at that ghostly white, almost perfectly round shape hanging over the valley. It’s eerie, that’s what it is.

At the same time the engine of the tow truck is heard, Hongjoong believes he hears a very faint, distant howl of a wolf. He feels Yeosang tense next to him. Then, the engine grows so loud, coughing— _they need a tow truck themselves_ , he muses—until the vehicle parks right in front of Hongjoong’s broken down car.

He hurries inside to get his papers, and hands the half melted cake to Yeosang, who takes it without questioning. Hongjoong talks to the tow truck driver and writes a couple of texts to his mechanic before he finally enters Yeosang’s car.

“Ready?”

Hongjoong hums in reply, fastening his seatbelt. He’s about to enjoy a quiet drive, with the radio playing softly in the background, as he comes down from his annoyance, when Yeosang opens his mouth, “Did you know wolves used to live abundantly in the forests around the valley?”

Hongjoong wears a pinched expression when he glances over. He’s momentarily struck by Yeosang’s elegant profile: his nose, slightly crooked toward the end, his prominent cheekbones below his fair eyelashes that brush over tanned skin, the pink smudge of his birthmark, the shape of his lips… Everything about him is so graceful and refined, as if he comes from a different century.

It doesn’t help that Yeosang is dressed in a tight shirt, tucked into his black jeans, which sits fittingly around his torso. The tanned skin of his arms wildly exposed, hidden tattoos of flowers and trees snake his skin as if he’s a forest himself.

It wakes a flutter in Hongjoong’s heart up, something that resides in a distant corner. It reminds him a lot of first loves and burning crushes, those typical heart-wrenching and stomach fluttering feelings.

He shakes his head and looks away. _What the hell was that,_ he scolds himself.

“Wolves, huh?” he echoes.

“Yeah!” Yeosang doesn’t seem to catch his impartiality regarding the topic. “There were multiple clans, all occupying different parts of the forest. The legend says they were lycanthropes—Do you know what lycans are? They’re people who turn to wolves around the full moon nights. But the legends don’t portray them as blood-thirsty beasts, rather like protectors of the forests,” he explains, his voice holds so much fondness. “Anyway, they migrated away to denser forests as the small villages became small towns, as farmers took over the valley, and streets were built.”

“Fascinating,” Hongjoong drawls, feigning disinterest still, but he has to admit it’s interesting. He knows very little about their small town and its surrounding lands. “Do you believe werewolves are real then?” he asks just for the hell of it.

“Hm…” Yeosang ponders about it for a while. “Maybe not werewolves, but I believe there are very smart wolves hiding in these forests.” He grins secretively when he glances at Hongjoong. “What about you?”

“Absolutely not. They’re just folklore. To scare children and whatnot.”

Yeosang bursts out laughing. It’s one of his genuine, caught off guard laughs—not the practiced, _ha ha ha_. Hongjoong hates himself a little for still knowing Yeosang’s different laughs. He shouldn’t. It’s been nearly three years since high school, since Yeosang disappeared, he should be gone and forgotten from Hongjoong’s mind.

The night seems to be cursed as they encounter another car broken down at the side of the road, about less than a kilometer from their small town. Yeosang tenses, the atmosphere changing quickly.

He promptly turns down the radio and lowers Hongjoong’s window as he stops next to the car. “‘Night. Anything we could help with?” he asks politely, but there’s a tightness around his eyes that is very unlike his usual playfulness and distracted mind.

A man and two women stand near the car: they eye Hongjoong briefly before their gazes turn toward Yeosang, coldness and arrogance in them.

“No. Not at all,” one of the women says. Hongjoong notices, with shock, that she has a gun strapped to her belt. He swallows; _what the fuck?_ Not just her, the other woman toys with a knife as she stares them down. The man has a gun as well. They look scary. “You’re Yeosang, aren’t you? Seonghwa’s younger brother?”

“Cousin,” Yeosang corrects her with a clipped tone.

Hongjoong wonders how Yeosang knows these people, or rather, how they know him? Is he involved with some major drug gang? Are they bounty hunters out to get him?

“No need to concern yourself, Yeosang,” the knife-woman says kindly, though it sounds threatening. “Our friend is on the way to help us.”

“Your friend,” Yeosang echoes, as if to say, ‘great, there’s more of you, then.’ “Well, have a safe night.”

He closes Hongjoong’s window and very slowly drives away before he speeds up. He keeps glancing at the rearview mirror. It’s not until the reach the town that he turns on the radio again, which is when Hongjoong dares to ask.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Yeah, right!”

“Hongjoong,” Yeosang says warningly. It catches Hongjoong off-guard. Usually, Yeosang was always playful and amicable with him, even if Hongjoong didn’t really stand him and pretty much acted like a dick in high school. It’s odd to be on the receiving end of that cold tone. He supposes, in those lost three years, Yeosang _has_ changed.

Hongjoong holds up his hands. “Alright, I won’t ask.”

Yeosang’s lips twitch. “Good.”

About twenty minutes later, Yeosang pulls up at the movie theatre. He turns to face Hongjoong, his eyes are warm. Suddenly, the air in the car feels all too tight and hot.

“Uh… Thanks for driving me,” Hongjoong says, keeping his cool, though he hears the crack in his voice. He quickly unbuckles his seat belt and jumps out of the car.

“No problem,” Yeosang tells him, nonchalant. “And Hongjoong,” against his better judgement, Hongjoong bends down to look at Yeosang, “it was nice seeing you again.”

“Likewise,” he mutters quickly before he slams the door shut and practically bolts toward the movie theatre.

He shows his ticket to the bored high schooler at the entrance, before he searches for Mingi. Hongjoong finds him sitting relatively in the front. He sits down, a little out of breath. Mingi studies him for a while, one of his eyebrows perfectly lifted.

“Dude, your face is red, what happened?” Mingi asks archly.

“ _Nothing_!” Hongjoong hisses. It’s only then that he realizes he’s forgotten his cake in Yeosang’s car. He passes a hand over his face, melting into the seat as embarrassment swallows him.

The next morning, Hongjoong wakes up groggily. His dream ebbs out of his mind, he can’t hold on to it, but he remembers the blue-white shimmer of a woman. She looked like the moon. The next thing he remembers is the previous night—not his broken down car and its impending bill, not Mingi’s short-movie—but the strange encounter with Yeosang.

( _Did that really happen? Is he back?_ )

He runs a hand through his brown hair, the remnants of hairspray make it stick up in all directions, before he forces himself out of bed and into the small kitchenette where Yunho’s making coffee, probably his second cup already.

“ _Oho_!” Yunho exclaims with fake wariness. “You look terrible!”

“Thanks.” Hongjoong leans against the counter, blearily looking through their small window: a large oak tree occupies most of the view, but between its branches and leaves, Hongjoong can see rooftops of family houses.

“Coffee?” Yunho asks, shaking the pot questioningly.

“Yes.”

“How was Mingi’s short-movie?”

“Terrible. Mingi’s work in the special effects and lightning was great—no doubt—but whoever came up with the story… Well, I have no clue what the _fuck_ was going on.”

Yunho laughs. “Poor Mingi.”

They sit comfortably by their breakfast bar after the coffee is done and Hongjoong has found the strength and motivation to prepare himself a bowl of cereals. The faint chatter of the radio accompanies them.

“And then, he stopped his car next to these really shady people—Like, Yunho, I mean it, they were really, _fucking_ shady,” Hongjoong explains to his flatmate. “I swear, Yeosang is just as weird as he was in high school.”

“Oddly, I remember him as this shy nerd. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to him. You know,” Yunho says, scratching his eyebrow, “sometimes I think you’re the only one who actually got to know him—the _real_ him.”

“Now, that’s ludicrous.“ He laughs in disbelief. “And he had a friend. That Wooyoung kid. The one that kept changing his hair color constantly.”

“Oh, yeah.” Yunho’s face flickers with recognition. All of a sudden he grins. “Did you know that Mingi claims you used to have a crush on Yeosang?”

Hongjoong grimaces. “Mingi claims a lot of shit. I didn’t have a crush on him—he was weird and irritating.”

His skin burns, though, as memories come crashing back. A time before high school, when he was close to Yeosang, closer than now, than in high school. Closer than anyone, possibly. He second guesses his so strong aversion to Mingi’s claims. Looking back at it from an adult-lens, maybe he did find Yeosang fascinating for a while.

Yunho opens his mouth, but his words die out as the radio commentator gains their attention.

“ _Breaking news! We’ve just received reports that the police have found a dismembered body at the gas station outside of town. They suspect it might have been a wolf attack, though there haven’t been any sightings in nearly sixty years—_ ”

“Oh, gruesome,” Yunho mutters. “Love that for breakfast,” he adds sarcastically. “You think you live in the most boring town on earth and then this happens.”

Hongjoong can’t reply, his mind immediately jumps back to the conversation he had with Yeosang the previous night, about the legends of the wolves that used to live in the forest around the valley.

“Do you think it really was a wolf?” he asks Yunho.

“Pff, no clue. I have more important issues, like my reading for Literature class.” He scrunches up his face in displeasure. “It’s the worst! I’m tempted to just download a summary on Google.”

Technically, Hongjoong has more pressing, college related issues too, but he can’t get that conversation out of his head—it’s too timely. His reencounter with Yeosang, his excited tales of the wolves, and now this dismembered corpse, possibly a victim of a wolf.

“Yeah, you’re right,” he says, though, and shakes his head. He needs to get translations going for his class, and finish one of his readings too. It offers a good distraction from those gruesome news and the off feeling that lingers in him.

This is why he avoided Yeosang, he’s always tied to strange happenings, as if he’s a beacon for them.

Even as he focuses on his college work, his mind keeps springing back to Yeosang. It’s not all that wrong of Yunho to say that Hongjoong might have been one of the few that got to truly know him, but if so, it had been entirely against Hongjoong’s will. In high school, Hongjoong’s goal were good grades so he could enroll to college for his desired career. Yeosang kept poking holes into that quite simple plan.

It first happened in middle school, when Yeosang fell terribly sick one day, and their homeroom teacher asked Hongjoong, since they were seat mate, to pay Yeosang a visit and bring him all his missed homework and assignments.

Hongjoong biked into the forest after school, grumbling and cursing under his breath the whole way, until he reached the desolate and dull looking house. He was surprised by Yeosang opening the door himself, looking pale with glassy eyes.

“Oh,” he said, surprised. “What brings you here?”

Hongjoong managed to peek into the house: it was in a state of disarray.

“Where are your parents?”

“Um… Gone,” replied Yeosang. He sounded unsure.

“I brought your homework.” He pulled out the papers, handing them to Yeosang.

“Thanks…”

Now, Hongjoong didn’t really want to know anything about Yeosang’s personal life. They were seat mates, which was already more than enough, but he couldn’t help the slither of worry at the sad appearance of the house, as though no one lived there.

“Are you okay?” he asked finally.

“Yeah. It’s just a cold.”

It looked like far more than just a cold.

Behind Yeosang appeared a young man, probably only nineteen. He tilted his head at Hongjoong, then glanced down at Yeosang.

“Who’s that?” he inquired warily but not unfriendly.

“Hongjoong. A classmate. He brought homework.”

“That’s very kind of you, Hongjoong,” said the young man. “I would invite you in, but we’re, uh, currently in the process of going through stuff. My uncle died and we need to sell some of our possessions…”

“Oh,” Hongjoong let out. It made sense. Then he added, not quite sure why, “If you need help, I’m available.”

Yeosang’s eyes widened in fear. “There’s no need—“

“That would be great!” the young man exclaimed, cutting off Yeosang. “How about Saturday morning? Just come here after breakfast.”

Hongjoong nodded. “It fits right into my schedule.”

Yeosang looked spooked. He offered Hongjoong a watery smile before he withdrew. The young man looked worried.

“You have to forgive him. He loved his dad—my uncle—very dearly. It’s been difficult for him to deal with the loss.”

Hongjoong just nodded again, a bit dumbfounded.

As he biked away from Yeosang’s house, he saw, at the edge of the forest, a large shadow move between bushes. He held his breath for a moment, shivering. Up above him, the sky was darkening, the full moon peeking out from behind dark clouds.

Hongjoong was thirteen, but the night still scared him greatly.

On Saturday, he drove his bike to Yeosang’s house. It was only ten in the morning, but there was already movement coming from inside. A large table, a variety of chairs, wooden boxes with silver cutlery all stood outside the house. There was a white van parked, its back door wide open.

It almost looked like they were moving.

Yeosang, dressed in jeans overalls and a plaid shirt, stepped out of the house, carrying a box filled with what looked to be clothes. He stopped the moment he saw Hongjoong, his eyebrows flying up.

“Oh, you came.” He frowned, as though he hadn’t expected Hongjoong to actually show up. He looked a lot better than he had days ago, less feverish.

“Yes.”

“Well, go ask Seonghwa with what you can help,” he said, dismissing Hongjoong immediately.

It struck Hongjoong as odd, in school he was nicer. This Yeosang was almost a stranger; he was wary and reserved.

Hongjoong shook his head, entering the house. The wooden planks creaked under his feet. He stilled, taking in the ancient structure of the house, almost like a mansion from another century: a grand chandelier hung over the entrance, a deep green threadbare rug in the living room, shelves covered with books and oddities that belonged in a museum. The only thing that really seemed century appropriate was the kitchen with its running fridge, microwave, oven… The staircase was of dark wood, shining in the light coming from the opened windows, a cloud of dust seemed to be forever suspended in the house, like a little galaxy.

Hongjoong noticed all the sepia and black and white photographs around. It looked as if no one had lived in this house in a very long time.

He furrowed his brows, glancing around for Seonghwa. He spotted him in the living room, trying to carry a flat-screen TV with his two friends. He saw Hongjoong, and smiled immediately.

“Ah, I’m glad you made it. Yeosang was saying you wouldn’t come.” He shook his head, smiling peculiarly. “Are you ready, Hongjoong? Did you have a strong breakfast?”

“Yes!”

Seonghwa smiled, and pointed at a box filled with CD’s. “You could carry that one, if it’s not too heavy.”

Hours passed, the two thirteen year old boys walking in and out of the house, carrying boxes and smaller furnitures. Seonghwa carried bigger pieces with his two friends. Midday rolled around and Hongjoong’s stomach grumbled loudly, embarrassing him.

Seonghwa laughed kindly. “Ah, I guess this should do for today.” He glanced at his friends, then at the van. “Would it be okay, Yeosang, if I drive out to deliver this? Can I leave you two rascals alone?”

“Yeah. We’re big already, Seonghwa,” Yeosang muttered, sounding a little exasperated.

“I was once thirteen too. I know the shenanigans one gets up to at that age,” he said good-naturedly, messing up Yeosang’s dark hair, who protested. “Let’s go,” he addressed his friends. “There’s ice-cream in the freezer,” he shouted over his shoulder at his cousin. He winked. “Don’t let Hongjoong starve!”

With a cloud of dust and the loud rumble of the engine, they vanished down the driveway toward he countryside road. It quietened down quickly. The woods were eerily silent this time of year, when autumn bled into winter.

“Do you want ice-cream?” Yeosang asked hesitantly.

Hongjoong nodded. “I could eat anything right now.” It did sound exciting to eat ice-cream unsupervised of adult eyes; did this mean they could eat as much as they desired?

In the kitchen, Hongjoong’s eyes fell on a sepia colored photograph attached to the fridge. Yeosang appeared on it, together with Seonghwa and three adults. It was from a few years ago, a time Hongjoong had almost forgotten, when he and Yeosang could have been considered friends. Though, with five, it was easier to call someone a friend than with thirteen.

Yeosang noticed him staring at the photograph and promptly ripped it off the fridge.

Bewildered, Hongjoong said, “Why’d you do that?”

“It makes me sad,” Yeosang replied simply. He held out a chocolate-vanilla ice-cream for Hongjoong, who took it. “Everyone has been pretending my dad’s death was a normal casualty, but we all know it wasn’t.”

“What happened to him?”

Yeosang shook his head. “I can’t tell you.”

“What about your mom?”

“She left a month ago,” he said, his lips pressed together thinly. “Though, she’ll come back. She said she would.”

Hongjoong was at a loss for words. At school, Yeosang always seemed so carefree and cheerful, talking about all his crazy stories to Hongjoong to the point of being almost obnoxious. Hongjoong had often told him so.

He wouldn’t have guessed Yeosang was going through such a hard time.

“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine this is easy.”

Yeosang shrugged. “Do you want to play Mario Kart? I have a console in my room.”

A bit stunned, Hongjoong nodded his head, following Yeosang upstairs. Yeosang’s room looked like that of any thirteen year old: dark colors, Star Wars themed bedsheets and posters, a collection of Lego Star Wars in a shelf—to which Yeosang said, admiringly, “It belongs to Seonghwa, but he’s letting me look after it.”—and a variety of books and comics.

They sat in front of the TV, on the carpeted floor of the room, their shoulders and knees touching, and invested themselves in the hectic and colorful world of Mario Kart.

Hongjoong began to forget about the reason why he was visiting Yeosang, his reluctance towards the boy, and lost himself in the moment, amused. He’d never laughed this much. Yeosang kept making small commentaries about the characters and the race as though he was telling a story—one completely his own that probably was only meant for him to understand wholly, but Hongjoong found it entertaining nonetheless. (And endearing, understanding this strange boy maybe a little better.)

“Thank you for helping us today,” said Yeosang when it was noon and Seonghwa was back.

It was time for Hongjoong to leave.

He hesitated, grabbing the handles of his bike tightly. “Will you be back on Monday?” he inquired.

Yeosang shrugged. “Maybe. Depends.”

“It’s boring without you,” Hongjoong admitted very quietly.

Yeosang smiled a small smile, turning his head so he could hide it. His black hair felt low into his dark golden eyes. He sniffled, rubbing his nose. “Ah, well, if you put it like that I guess I’ll have to come back.”

Hongjoong’s cheeks felt warm. He ducked his head and pedaled away, into the noon.

On Monday, Yeosang wasn’t back, but his mother was. It was a huge headline in the newspapers, a photograph showed her in torn clothes and with dirty hair. Apparently she’d been wandering the woods for weeks, in a catatonic state after her husband’s death.

After school, Hongjoong drove to Yeosang’s house, but he didn’t knock nor enter it. He stared at it from the edge of the forest, intimidated all of a sudden. He didn’t want to intrude. It became customary for him to pedal his bike up the little hill, astray from the main road, to spy on the house, always wondering if he should knock or not.

(Four years later, when this custom wasn’t at all needed anymore because Yeosang had come back to school eventually, pretending nothing strange had happened, blabbering endlessly and obnoxiously as ever, Hongjoong found his legs taking him up the hill, to the woods, where Yeosang’s house stood at the edge.

Yeosang hadn’t come to school that February morning.

Hongjoong startled when he found a big ‘For Sale’ sign standing in front yard of the house.

Yeosang never came back to school after that.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lmk what u think^^
> 
> \- [twitter](https://twitter.com/hhhjoong)  
> 


	2. ii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moon is the forest’s center, a little bit of magic woven into every branch and leaf and petal under that blue light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some things are revealed, yeosang is a little shit, hongjoong is whipped......👀
> 
> i hope you enjoy it!!💛💛

_“Look up, child of the wolves,” says a woman. Her voice is deep yet clear, but not at all human. “Look at these beautiful trees growing around you. They’re yours, child. You must protect them.” Her voice sounds a little sad as the child of the wolves looks at the trees, once miles of them covered these lands. They’re scarce now. “There’s a terrible danger that challenges your kind, and your integrity in this valley. As the last clan of the valley, we count on you to protect our home.”_

* * *

The dismembered corpse revisits Hongjoong in the form of a phone call.

“Dude!” says Mingi, in the background there’s sounds of video game guns going off. “Did you hear the news?”

“What news?” asks Hongjoong, his background sounds come from a very bizarre movie he’s watching with Yunho. It’s about aliens, but also biology.

“About the found body—the wolf-attack?”

“Oh.”

“We should go into the forest to look for the wolf. Everyone is doing it!”

“Would you jump off a cliff if everyone did—“

“Man, shut up. That’s the dumbest argument ever, and you know it.”

On screen, Natalie Portman enters a really strange forest together with a team of scientists. Hongjoong has to say he’s mildly interested in the movie. Its oddness and unpredictability make it so interesting.

“Well, my answer remains the same: no. That’s crazy.”

“Come on,” Mingi whines. “I’ll buy you dinner.”

“You know I don’t fall for that.”

“ _Ugh_.”

‘What does he want?’ mouthes Yunho.

‘Forest. Look for the wolf,’ Hongjoong mouthes back.

‘Sick.’ Yunho gives him a thumb up. “Do it,” he whispers. Hongjoong frowns. “I’ll do the dishes for a month.”

“On second thought, count me in, Mingi,” he speaks into his phone.

Maybe Hongjoong isn’t easily bought through food, but nothing gets him more than not having to do the chores, especially the dishes. He loathes them.

“Sweet! I’ll pick you up tonight at 8.”

“Wait, Mingi, why the hell would we go at night—“ But Mingi has already hung up. With a long suffering sigh he puts his phone down, resting his head against the couch. “God damn it.”

“It’ll be cool,” Yunho says.

Hongjoong does, most definitely, not think it’ll be cool.

As predicted, the forest at night is a nightmare. Even more so as it is summer and insects are buzzing about, mosquitoes having the feast of their lives on Hongjoong and Mingi’s blood.

“You’re terrible. This is terrible,” Hongjoong says.

“Am not,” Mingi replies easily. “This is nice.” He gestures wildly at the patches of sky they can see through the canopies of the trees. “The moon is still pretty full, and you can see Jupiter, look!”

Hongjoong squints at his friend before he turns his eyes on a steady, bright dot in the sky. He supposes it’s sort of fascinating they can see Jupiter from Earth. Still, it’s not at all cool they’re in the forest, at night time, after a wolf— it’s confirmed now—attacked a human.

“Dude!” Mingi suddenly exclaims. “I totally forgot to tell you.”

“What?”

“I saw Yeosang the other day. Seems like they’re back, at last. I heard they bought their old family house back,” he says.

“They were gone…?”

“Yeah, man! Seonghwa and Yeosang moved away around our last year of high school, don’t you remember?”

Hongjoong does, in fact, remember. He remembers the ‘For Sale’ sign, the emptiness in his chest, and the worry upon Yeosang’s sudden disappearance. He thought of Yeosang’s mother, his deceased father, and that afternoon, a long time ago, spent in Yeosang’s house. He wondered for a while if Yeosang would ever come back, if he would ever explain.

“Anyway,” Mingi continues when Hongjoong doesn’t say anything, “he’s back. He’s working down at that retro bakery. He looks good, you should see him.”

“I _have_ seen him,” Hongjoong admits slowly.

Mingi whips his head in Hongjoong’s direction, eyebrows flying up in surprise. “You have? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not a big deal. He actually drove me to the movie theatre after my car broke down. We talked some, it was really weird.”

“Of course you’d say that.”

“No, believe me, it was a weird encounter. I think he’s involved in some shady stuff.”

Hongjoong doesn’t need to see Mingi to know he’s rolling his eyes. “Not this again,” he mutters.

They fall into silence. Hongjoong wants to argue with Mingi that he’s not crazy or basing his theory on empty accusations, but Mingi has sped up his steps, clearly not wanting to hear it.

Now that they are quiet the night has become loud, and alive. He remembers a faint memory, it percolates through his consciousness, his awareness of the forest around him and his slight fear toward it, like a hidden creek that is only found by those that know where exactly it lies in the vast, thick woods.

“The forest is alive,” Yeosang once told him, of a time long forgotten, but in the forest it suddenly feels like it happened only yesterday. The sudden reappearance of Yeosang is greatly messing with Hongjoong, he’s suddenly missing and chasing a specific kind of feeling, he’s wandering through a forest at night time ( _how insane_!), and all because he has a feeling he might encounter Yeosang in there.

Yeosang, who lived at the edge of the woods, who was always so strangely drawn to them.

“They’re magic: these trees, these flowers,” he continued. “It’s all magic, this forest, and the moon.” He looked up at the sky, it was a new moon night so all they could see were the stars. “The moon is its center.”

Hongjoong didn’t understand it the time, but he thinks he gets it now. The moon is the forest’s center, a little bit of magic woven into every branch and leaf and petal under that blue light.

There’s the hoot of an owl, a response to it—they go back and forth. An indistinguishable screech that almost sounds human, but Hongjoong knows it isn’t, just some weird bird or owl. The cicadas’ songs are roaring, sometimes growing in volume.

It’s so hopelessly summer, he thinks. He’s missed it. He feels as if he hasn’t experienced summer in so long, between high school and then college and work.

As they step through the thick forest, Hongjoong starts talking again, not being able to let go of his previous thoughts, “I really think Yeosang could be involved with drug dealers. If you could have seen the scene—”

 **“** I think you’re once again obsessing over him,” Mingi cuts him short, moving his flashlight wildly, suspending them momentarily into darkness. “What was it in middle school? That Yeosang was a vampire?”

“Shut up!” Hongjoong hisses, embarrassed.

“And in high school, you claimed that Yeosang was trying to curse you?” Mingi carries on, completely ignoring Hongjoong’s protests. He sounds amused, which Hongjoong does not appreciate. Mingi is supposed to be his best friend, not his best foe. “I say you were crushing on him back then and that’s why you kept dropping everything whenever he was near.”

“That’s—! That’s not true!” Hongjoong cries, his ears burning. He did not have a crush on Yeosang, much less in high school. The kid had looked like a walking fashion crime with his flat black hair, almost always unkept and slightly greasy, and his ugly sweatpants and discolored hoodies. No, absolutely not.

“Whatever,” Mingi says dismissively. “Let’s not lose sight of why we are here.”

“Did we have to come at night? You realize this is how people die in horror movies.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in the legends.” Mingi looks at him amusedly.

“I don’t. I just think it’s foolish to walk around the forest at night! Like, what the _fuck_?! We’re twenty, we should be partying or something. Go wild, go crazy—“

“Hongjoong? Shut up. You ramble when you’re scared.”

Hongjoong sputters, offended.

The rustle of a bush makes the two friends stop dead in their tracks. They exchange a wary look. Their hearts high in their throats. Mingi’s hand shakes a little when he flashes his flashlight around.

“Hello?” Mingi asks into the darkness, into the uncharted forest.

“’Hello?’ Really? You reckon a wolf is going to answer you?” Hongjoong mutters under his breath. He can’t deny that he’s a little bit on edge.

“The legends say these wolves are humans during the day,” reasons Mingi. “I figure they could talk.”

Hongjoong rolls his eyes. “Sure. Whatever.”

Mingi’s flashlight finds a young wild cat, it looks startled and scared. After some beats of silence it hurries off into the night to keep hunting.

“Well, that didn’t lead us anywhere. We should—“

“Holy shit!” Mingi exclaims, his flashlight moving upward to point at a wolf. An actual wolf, though it seems bigger than how Hongjoong imagined them, its eyes more intelligent than an animal’s should be.

The wolf studies them, it’s nearly completely melted with the darkness of the night, if not for the reflection of its golden eyes that Mingi’s flashlight has caught on. The outline of it is faintly visible, its fur seems to be light brown with darker patches perfectly blending together. The wolf’s eyes catch onto Hongjoong, staying on him for a moment.

 _It’s going to eat me_ , he thinks. _Cool_.

But the wolf turns around, vanishing into the forest, its paws on the dry leaves and grass are all they hear for a while until they’re submerged back into the cacophony of cicadas and owls.

“Dude,” whispers Mingi, eyes wide as saucers. “That was a wolf!”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong breathes. “Can we leave now?”

“What? No! We should follow it. It seemed harmless enough.”

“Harmless? It’s a wolf, Mingi. It’s a miracle it hasn’t attacked us.”

Mingi considers Hongjoong’s words briefly, then lets out a sigh. “Fine. You’re right. I’m being senseless.”

“Thank you,” he mutters pointedly.

As they walk back from where they have come, Hongjoong wonders what the odds are of Yeosang talking about the tales of the wolves and suddenly wolves are back, when they have not been sighted in decades. Though, he supposes, the wolves could have been hiding all these years.

What has brought them out of their hiding?

Yeosang said the tales depicted them as harmless protectors of the woods, not brutal creatures that dismembered humans. Perhaps it’s all a crass coincidence and Hongjoong is reading too far into it; obsessing over Yeosang, as Mingi put it.

It takes Hongjoong a while before realizing they are possibly lost.

“Mingi,” he says warily.

Mingi hums in response.

“Do you know where we are?”

Mingi stays quiet for a moment, it reeks of guilt. “In the forest,” he replies with _faux_ bravado.

“Mingi,” Hongjoong repeats sharply. “Could it be that we are lost?”

“No! This is all very familiar,” Mingi says petulantly.

Hongjoong closes his eyes, resisting the urge to massage his temples. When he opens his eyes, Mingi is a few steps ahead already. Hongjoong is quick to follow him, the last thing he needs is to be alone out in the woods at night time—with a wild wolf stalking about.

“Mingi, the last thing I need is to be lost in the forest—“

“I swear I’ve seen that tree before,” Mingi insists.

“Just admit we’re lost,” Hongjoong mutters, annoyed and exasperated. He just wants to get to his little flat and sleep for fifty years; maybe Yunho has some leftovers from his dinner that Hongjoong could inhale.

“We’re not! Look, there’s my Kia!”

Hongjoong lets out a sigh of relief, his shoulders sagging as the tension and slight panic ebb out of his body. He wipes his nose, shivering. Despite it being summer, close to midnight it’s still fresh.

Hongjoong and Mingi hesitate in their steps as they notice a figure standing right by the beaten down Kia. They’re clad in black jeans and an oversized jeans jacket. The wavy blond hair immediately gives their identity away.

Yeosang.

Hongjoong scowls. Two encounters with Yeosang so close? Something shady had to be up. _Perhaps he’s decided to curse me again_ , he ponders while they approach the Kia.

Yeosang seizes them with an angry look; Hongjoong notices a deep cut on Yeosang’s cheek, it connects with his birthmark. He frowns, worry come and gone quick. Mingi tilts his head, lowering the flashlight so he’s not directly shining it into Yeosang’s face, though for a moment his eyes look as golden as the wolf’s had.

“‘Sup,” Mingi greets their old high school classmate casually. “What a coincidence to find you out here.”

Yeosang ignores he subtle insinuation in his tone. “What were you doing out here?” he asks sharply, although not unkindly, he sounds more worried than anything else.

“We were doing what everyone is doing: looking for the wolves,” Mingi responds with a shrug. “After all, it has been years since the legendary wolves have roamed the valley. It’s exciting to know they’re back.”

Yeosang stares at him, perplexed. “You shouldn’t. It’s dangerous.”

“Look man, we’re adults. We can handle ourselves.”

Yeosang glances at Hongjoong, as if to say, ‘speak some sense into your friend’ and Hongjoong looks back with, ‘I tried, dude, believe me, I tried’.

“How about we carry this discussion into the comfort of my Kia and all the way to Burger King for some fries and burgers, hm?” Mingi offers, unlocking his car.

Hongjoong’s shoulders tense, but he doesn’t argue the invitation Mingi hands Yeosang.

“Okay,” Yeosang agrees, climbing into the backseat row. He scrunches up his nose. “What’s that smell?”

“Ah, that’s lost socks and Cheetos, I believe,” Mingi comments casually and unashamedly. He turns the key, the engine springing alive and the radio blasting Abba.

Hongjoong winces. “Jesus.”

“Oh, I love _Waterloo_ ,” Yeosang says, suddenly cheerful. Any hints of his previous worry and seriousness gone. He starts to hum along to Abba.

He’s in the middle seat, the black seatbelt around his torso, and leaning forward, his blonde waves in the periphery of Hongjoong’s eyes.

It’s mildly distracting. That, and the strong smell of forest and fresh air, and those faint undertones of Yeosang's own scent. They carry Hongjoong back to simpler days, when the world was filled with playgrounds and fantastical creatures. When they were pirates or princes or dragons, no limitation to their imagination.

He glances to his side, at Yeosang, and quickly looks away.

Mingi drives the Kia out of the parking slot, away from the woods, to the countryside road.

“How crazy is this? The three of us together again?” muses Yeosang; he has his cheek pressed against Hongjoong’s headrest—he’s so, so close. “Remember when we used to play tag?”

“Those were the times, man,” Mingi agrees, glancing at Hongjoong. “Right, Hong?”

“Yeah! Crazy,” Hongjoong echoes distantly.

As he watches the inky night, memories form in his mind. They’re easy to grasp now that he stares at the darkness, void of anything. He sees himself, at around five, running around a playground. Yeosang and Mingi are there, as is San—another forgotten and stray kid Hongjoong hasn’t heard of since their graduation. Maybe he’ll reappear one of these days too, spurting out of the ground like Yeosang had.

“It’s good to be back,” Yeosang mutters so quietly Hongjoong believes for a moment he’s imagined it. “I was worried everything would be different.”

“Is it not?” Hongjoong wonders.

“Some,” Yeosang admits. “But other things have stayed just the same.” His tone is fond, and when Hongjoong turns his head to glance at him, he realizes Yeosang is looking at him. They both turn away quickly.

Hongjoong’s ears and face burn.

As they near their small town and street lamps and headlights turn that inky night into a warm colored one of cobblestones and houses, Hongjoong turns his attention back to Mingi and Yeosang, who are talking casually about different topics.

No one is addressing the very obvious and worrying injury on Yeosang’s cheek, so Hongjoong does, “What happened?”

“Huh?” Yeosang and Mingi let out at the same time, confused.

“Your cheek,” Hongjoong clarifies. “What happened?”

“Oh.” Yeosang covers it, self-consciously. “I walked into a tree.”

It’s a very unclever lie, but his intense eyes don’t give much room for discussion. Plus, Hongjoong can’t be staring at him for too long, this up close. It’s causing a tightness in his lower abdomen, an irregularity in his heartbeat, and a blurriness of the world surrounding them.

“That sucks,” says Mingi easily.

Hongjoong is not at all satisfied with this answer; he has an incorrigible need to know people’s secrets—all while he does not expose his own. He doesn’t seek the truth further, though, remembering Yeosang’s cold and deflective tone nights ago.

“Safe to say the tree looks worse?” he asks instead.

Yeosang laughs. “You know it. How dare it stand in my way!”

Hongjoong rolls his eyes, but his lips twitch with a fond smile.

As odd and obnoxious Yeosang was during middle and high school, unpredictable and hiding secrets, Hongjoong has to admit he finds it amusing—and endearing. He’s missed that carefreeness Yeosang seems to hold deep in his spirit, even if he’s gone through a very strange childhood and obviously holds heaviness on his shoulders; the way he doesn’t let it drag him down, spreading cheerfulness as he talks about things no one else understands or makes jokes no one seems to get. Yeosang lives in freedom, as free as a human can be, and lets others live in it too.

It starkly clashes with everything Hongjoong is: from his impeccability and seriousness, his wariness; his need to know people inside out and hold a hand over their lives, not necessarily in seek of control, but so he can hold them appropriately.

They’re complete opposites.

Their small town has one single Burger King—and one McDonald’s, but no one likes it since its always swarmed with prepotent and loud teenagers—which is situated at the edge of the town. It’s eerily empty. Usually, around this time of the day, for a Friday, it’d be packed; Hongjoong faintly remembers the gas station nearby, where the dismembered body was found. 

The three young men enter the establishment, ordering a variation of burgers, and fries, and chicken nuggets before they claim a table near the entrance. There’s a perfect view onto the empty parking lot, the Burger King sign in the sky like a bat signal, the waning moon right next to it, like another warning sign of some sort.

“I haven’t had fast food in ages,” Yeosang says, happily biting into his burger, ketchup dribbles down his finger. He moves to lick it, his pink tongue peeking out from his red lips. Hongjoong catches the movement, averting his gaze quickly.

He squints his eyes at the logo on the chicken nuggets box, ‘Have it your way!’

“You were missing out,” Mingi tells him.

“Were you dieting?” Hongjoong asks.

Mingi snorts.

“No, we just didn’t live near any fast food restaurants,” Yeosang explains with a shrug.

“Where _did_ you live?”

“At my uncle’s—Seonghwa’s dad—two towns over. You can’t really call it a town, it was a small village, very small.” He scrunches up his nose. “It was dreadful, I tell you! No movie theatre, no fast food restaurants, no kiosks…”

“Sounds horrible,” Hongjoong agrees, ceasing his line of questions.

It’s very late when Mingi parks his Kia near Hongjoong and Yunho’s flat, only a ten minute walk from his own house. As he turns off the engine, submerging them into silence, he seizes up Yeosang, eyes widening.

“Oh, shoot,” he swears under his breath. “I completely forgot you don’t live around here.” He gives Yeosang his puppy eyes; they always work.

“It’s okay, I’ll just walk home.” Yeosang shrugs.

“No!” Mingi says insistently. “You should sleep over at Hong’s. He has a big bed, you’d fit right into it.”

Hongjoong stares pointedly at the Kia’s dashboard, controlling the heat in his face—and the strong desire to drop kick Mingi. Perhaps Yeosang is oblivious enough, but Hongjoong sees right through Mingi and his intentions.

“I-I mean,” Yeosang stutters, which is not very like him. Hongjoong sharpens his ears to hear any other waver in Yeosang’s voice. As incorrigible as his intrusives and abundant questions can be, so is his need to analyze people. “If it’s not a problem, I’ll take that offer,” he sounds hesitant.

Hongjoong turns around, nearly jumping back with how close Yeosang’s face is. He stills, though, studying those eyes briefly. When he finally does put distance between them, he’s overly aware of Mingi’s stare on them.

“You can stay the night,” Hongjoong finally says.

“Perfect!” Mingi exclaims, and exists the car.

It’s a short walk to Hongjoong and Yunho’s flat, they don’t talk much. Without Mingi there to bring casualty to their relationship, Hongjoong feels as though he is drowning now that it’s just the two of them—floods of memories and burning questions wash over him.

“Thank you for letting me stay,” Yeosang whispers as Hongjoong unlocks the door.

The flat is dark and silent, Yunho long gone to sleep.

“It’s no problem,” he says, using his phone’s flashlight to guide Yeosang to his room, where he turns the light switch on.

His room is perfectly clean and in order, but he still feels self-conscious about it all. Yeosang doesn’t say anything as he kicks off his shoes and removes his jeans jacket. He puts it on a free chair, delicately, as if he’s scared to disturb Hongjoong’s order.

Hongjoong studies Yeosang for a moment, from his long legs in those skinny jeans and the tight, black shirt deliciously enveloping his broad shoulders and small waist, up to his exposed collarbones, and his tattooed arms.

He feels his skin burn in response.

“I have a shirt I could lend you to sleep; do you need sweatpants?” he asks, pretending this was his only reason to check Yeosang out.

“Shirt will suffice,” Yeosang tells him. He rubs his birthmark, hissing when his fingers grace his cut.

“I’ll get some alcohol and a cloth so you can clean it,” Hongjoong says after throwing one of his old t-shirts at Yeosang, and leaves for the bathroom to gather the aforementioned items.

When he’s back, Yeosang is dressed in the t-shirt, it fits him perfectly, and boxers shorts, his tanned legs show more tattoos of flowers and trees. Hongjoong wonders why he’s chosen that theme. He’s also momentarily caught on his defined thighs, muscle moving below skin as Yeosang sits on the edge of the bed.

“Could you clean the wound? There’s no mirror here.”

“Sure,” Hongjoong agrees, hoping he sounds casual.

He stands right in front of Yeosang. He glances down for a moment, his eyes catching Yeosang’s—they seem to be darker. It’s staggering to see his face so close, how it changes between perfectly angelical features to something intense and dark to that elegant and graceful side, like a kaleidoscope.

When a familiar tightness comes and goes below Hongjoong’s abdomen, his heart dipping low, he unscrews the bottle of disinfecting alcohol, dapping some of it on the cloth. He ignores the tremble in his hand, the sudden desire to lean forward and remove Yeosang’s t-shirt to explore the skin he’s hiding.

He gently presses the cloth on the wound. Yeosang hisses, flinching, but he doesn’t move away.

“Sorry,” Hongjoong mumbles.

“It’s okay.”

Yeosang’s eyes fall shut, his long, dark eyelashes hushing over his cheeks. Hongjoong swallows as he keeps studying him.

He’s teleported back to a night similar to this one, almost three years ago. It was Halloween and seventeen year old Hongjoong was pedaling like crazy in the hopes to make it home before curfew. He had lost track of time while playing horror games with Mingi and Yunho in Mingi’s garage—which had been changed to a lounging area for him to hang out with his friends.

He took a shortcut through the forest, it was a rocky and dark way, but the fear of his parents’ anger was bigger than anything that could hide in the dark woods. He passed by an old skatepark, weeds overgrowing the ramps and vines snaking around the railings. No one visited it anymore after the much bigger and improved one had opened near the town’s mall.

Hongjoong was about to pedal past it, when his eyes caught on a lump lying on the ground, atop one of the ramps. He thought at first it was trash, but then the lump moved, sitting up. The person put a hoodie over their head, groaning in pain. Hongjoong considered leaving, he didn’t know this stranger or their danger level, but then his eyes caught their face.

Yeosang.

Yeosang with a cut running down his cheek, beaten black and blue.

Hongjoong shivered, stumbling out of his bike so he could sprint over to him, forgetting all precautions.

“Yeosang!” he exclaimed breathlessly. “Yeosang what happened?”

Yeosang blinked up at him, his eyes traveling up and down Hongjoong’s body. ”What… are you wearing?”

Hongjoong looked down. “Uh. I was dressed as a werewolf for a Halloween party.”

Yeosang snorted. “Interesting.” He managed to stand up, swaying a little.

“Are you okay?” Hongjoong asked, wincing.

“Huh?” Yeosang noticed Hongjoong’s worried gaze traveling over the bad shape of his face. “Oh, yes! No need to worry.” He said it so dismissively, so casually, as if it was a simple paper cut.

“Yeosang… You can’t be serious.”

“I am. It’s fine. This is nothing.”

“What even happened?”

Yeosang pressed his lips together, glancing at the sky above, the full moon reflecting in his beautiful eyes—they were like coal and fire, dark and golden.

“It doesn’t concern you,” he simply replied. “Nothing you should worry your pretty head over.”

Hongjoong balled his hands into fists, clenching them once before letting go. He tried not to let his anger toward the carelessness show.

“Let me at least help you clean the wounds. Your house is nearby.”

Yeosang studied him steadily. “Sure. No one’s home.”

After Hongjoong climbed on his bike, Yeosang followed suit. His chest was pressed into Hongjoong’s back, his arms tightly around his waist. He could feel each of Yeosang’s soft exhales against the nape of his neck, curling his hairs. He shivered, his heart beating loudly all of a sudden.

Together they drove underneath the moonlight toward Yeosang’s house; as promised it was dark and empty.

“Where is everyone?” Hongjoong asked, waiting in the entrance hall as Yeosang gathered first-aid supplies from a nearby bathroom.

“Out!” came the vague reply.

Hongjoong bit the inside of his cheek. ‘Out’ could mean so many things.

He studied the house, it hadn’t changed much since that time four years ago. There was a big painting hanging underneath the staircase, it showed wolves running through familiar looking forests. It was beautiful, but what caught Hongjoong’s attention were the golden eyes of one of the wolves. They weirdly resembled Yeosang’s own.

He shook his head, stepping back as he heard Yeosang come out of the bathroom.

“Follow me,” Yeosang said, entering the living room.

He sat down on the couch, pulling out disinfecting alcohol and gauzes and small scissors. He stared up at Hongjoong expectantly. Suddenly aware of the intimacy this required, Hongjoong’s hands trembled as he dipped a cotton ball in alcohol.

They stood so closely now, Hongjoong’s knees touching Yeosang’s, when he leaned forward, their faces were only centimeters apart, the heat radiating from Yeosang, his exhales, were nearly intoxicating.

Hesitantly, Hongjoong pushed Yeosang’s black hair away from his face so he could move the cotton over Yeosang’s wounds.

“ _Ouch_.”

“Sorry.”

Yeosang grinned. “I’m exaggerating, you’re good.”

Hongjoong scoffed, but his heart was still beating loudly and Yeosang’s hair was so soft. His face, despite the injuries, was graceful and mystifying. Yeosang was a strange kid, annoying and insufferable, not this sudden mystery hiding so much; not this boy of blue, that made Hongjoong’s heart ache in empathy and worry.

“All done,” Hongjoong says, forcing the memory away.

He’s about to drop his hand, but Yeosang catches it, his fingers encircling Hongjoong’s wrist. His pulse is flying, Yeosang surely notices it.

“Thank you, Hongjoong,” he whispers, his eyes dark and fixated on Hongjoong. “You always seem to catch me when I’m hurt.”

Hongjoong doesn’t know what he’s supposed to reply. “Well, you should take better care of yourself,” he ends up scolding him, freeing his wrist so he can flee to the bathroom and dispose of the alcohol and cloth.

This time, when he comes back—after washing his face in the hopes the blush and heat subside—Yeosang is lying in his bed, he’s put up a pillow in the middle of the bed, like a wall. Hongjoong eyes it, but doesn’t say anything.

“Is this side okay? Or do you prefer sleeping next to the wall?” Yeosang asks.

“It’s fine,” Hongjoong says, slipping under the blanket. He switches the light off.

Darkness, and absolute silence.

The pillow separating them feels like a joke: Hongjoong can hear each of Yeosang’s breaths, he can smell that wildness of the woods and the heart-wrenching scent that’s only his, he can feel the dip in the mattress where Yeosang is lying…

In the near pitch-blackness of his bedroom, he grows courageous.

“Why did you leave, three years ago?” he asks quietly.

For a moment he thinks Yeosang has already fallen asleep, but then he answers, “We had to sell the house. My mom said it wasn’t safe for us anymore. We would have left a lot earlier, but I insisted we should stay, so I could graduate…”

“You didn’t,” Hongjoong says, “graduate.”

“Eventually I did,” Yeosang tells him.

“Yeosang,” he begs.

It’s been an unanswered question for years—not just Yeosang’s sudden departure, but everything about him—and an open wound he’s dealt with in the worst way: hiding it from everyone and himself. Shame, guilt, worry all following him as he wondered and wondered many sleepless nights like this one.

Now that Yeosang is back, he can’t help but demand answers.

“When my dad… died,” Yeosang begins slowly, “everything changed for my family. We didn’t feel appropriate or safe anymore. It was clear sooner or later we’d leave. I didn’t want to leave, certain things were keeping me here. My friends and…” He quietens. “We got a letter from Seonghwa’s dad, we were needed elsewhere so we moved. Now, Seonghwa and I are back, my mom has stayed with her brother.”

“Why are you back?” Hongjoong asks.

“Reasons,” Yeosang gives away vaguely and ominously.

It’s entirely not enough to appease Hongjoong’s curiosity, but he lets it go.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he admits very quietly; the words almost get stuck in his throat.

It’s in sleepless nights like this one, in the comforting and unseeing darkness, that admitting his honesty feels the easiest.

“Me, too,” Yeosang whispers back. He moves around in the bed, the pillow separating them moves too. Hongjoong holds his breath, thinking Yeosang will remove it—God, he desperately hopes he does—but that doesn’t happen. “Hongjoong, I—“

“Yes?” he croaks out, his lungs burning, his face contorting with emotions. He lets them pass through his face freely, no one’s there to see them.

“I’m sorry for leaving without telling you. I wanted to leave you a letter, but it was all so sudden. I’m sorry.”

The words soothe some of that anger and resentment he carried for the past three years. He shifts in his bed, facing the pillow. He knows Yeosang is facing it too.

Jongho’s mechanic shop is a small building, passed down from generation to generation, currently split between the Choi brothers. It’s quite central and always, without doubt, plays rock and roll music, accompanying the odor of grease and metal is an underlying scent of spices. Jongho has installed a little kitchen in the back of the shop, putting a lot of importance that him and his brother eat well.

As Hongjoong picks up his trashy car—there was a problem with the water and heating system, Hongjoong doesn’t really understand anything—Jongho is in a good mood, he’s talking about anything at all: the summery weather, the town's festivities happening soon, a new co-worker of his…

Hongjoong’s got his hip propped up against the counter, inspecting his nails as he waits for Jongho to come back with the paperwork and the bill, when he sees that aforementioned new co-worker: they’re wearing a baseball cap, dark blue cotton overalls smeared with grease and oil. They are half beneath a car, humming along to the rock songs in a deep timbre.

“Is he working you well?” Hongjoong asks casually, expecting to see a teenager’s face who’s doing a summer job and learning the first important lessons about labor.

“Hm,” an affirmative hum comes. Then the new mechanic moves out form under the car, wide eyes blinking up at Hongjoong. “Oh!”

“What,” Hongjoong starts, wrinkling his brows, “are you doing here?”

Yeosang sits up, cleaning his hands on a cloth over the car’s hood—it’s already filled with stains, Hongjoong doubts it’ll help.

“I work here,” he says easily. “Jongho’s a good friend of mine.”

“Of course he is,” Hongjoong mutters, pushing a hand through his hair.

He eyes Yeosang, there’s a smudge of grease on his cheek, where the injury was —there is no trace of the wound—and maybe Hongjoong is very easy, but he can’t deny that Yeosang looks good in the overall.

Over all, people looked good in overalls.

Yeosang glances at the clock, sighing. He stretches out his arms before he unbuttons part of the overall, underneath he’s wearing a sleeveless black shirt. His tattooed arms are covered in a thin layer of sweat, glistening in the afternoon sun.

For a senseless, confusing second he imagines those arms wrapped around his waist. He shakes his head, looking away. There’s no need to indulge _that_ mess.

Jongho comes back timely, beckoning over Hongjoong for the paperwork.

“It’ll work now, but you should probably look to invest into a new car, Hongjoong,” he says. “I fixed it for now.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeosang helped a lot. He’s quite handy.” He jerks his chin at Yeosang, who grins.

“Well, thank you.”

“No problem, Hongjoong.”

“You know each other?” Jongho inquires, curious. His eyes switching between the two.

“We went to school together,” Yeosang explains. “We were seat mates almost every year.”

“Ah.” Jongho lets out, eyebrows flying up in a way that suggests something—something Hongjoong doesn’t catch.

Faintly, he thinks, _seat mates? Is that all we were?_

“I should be going,” he begins.

Yeosang interrupts him, “Jongho is holding a pregaming get-together for the Saint’s week. You should come.”

“I should be the one inviting guests,” Jongho mutters. “But I don’t see why not. I’ll text you the info.”

“Sure,” Hongjoong says with a shrug. “I’ll see if I can come.”

The Saint’s celebrations are a week in which their small town celebrates the Saint that protects them. There’s a variety of activities such as fishing and cooking competitions, fun and entertaining activities for the little ones, and of course two nights of partying at the main plaza of the town, where a stage will be built for DJ’s and bands to take over.

They’re a lot of fun from what Hongjoong remembers; he has never really attended the parties as Mingi isn’t one for major and loud social gatherings, and Yunho claims it’s full of teenagers getting drunk, which is funny coming from him as he once one of those teenagers —Hongjoong never points it out to him.

“See you later!” Yeosang calls out as Hongjoong leaves Jongho’s mechanic shop. He’s waving enthusiastically.

Hongjoong waves back, a little distracted as he’s unlocking his car. He sees Jongho rolling his eyes, punching Yeosang’s shoulder and saying something that has Yeosang turn beet red—he can’t recall any time he’s seen Yeosang blush. Jongho’s loud laughter and Yeosang’s protests are swallowed as Hongjoong turns on his engine.

There’s a yellow post-it note attached to the radio. It reads, ‘ _That cake you left in my car was really good. Thanks! -YS_ ’ He rolls his eyes, and crumples the note and shoving it into his jeans pocket. He turns on the radio and drives off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasnt gonna post yet, but decided to as a Christmas present! Not everyone is fortunate to celebrate these days in company or they do but in bad company, I sure know I was there, and I remember reading fics to not feel as alone, so maybe this update might cheer someone up! 
> 
> Love you, stay safe!!💛💛


	3. iii.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeosang licks his lips, eyes flickering around Hongjoong’s face, wonderment dancing everywhere in his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: wolf attack, drinking

_The leaves rustle, whispers jumping around, telling the secrets of the forest. In the clearing stands the woman, her gaze turned to the night sky above. The moonlight shines on her, she’s an extension of it._ _“Child of the wolves,” she says. “Horrors beyond your imagination are about to unfold.” She smiles sadly. “Remember the forest, the magic, the stories… Remember me.”_

* * *

Days later, another dismembered body is found. Well, only one half of it near a hiking trail into the hills. The other half is yet to be found. Apparently, it’s a few days old.

“Gross,” was Yunho’s comment that morning.

Hongjoong is not at all surprised when he sees Mingi’s text some time throughout the day, while Hongjoong is at college.

_Tonight. 8pm. We’re looking for the body._

He lets out a sigh, silencing his phone as his professor is glaring at him for the interruptions.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, returning to his Syntax class. He taps his notebook with his pen. A wild idea crosses his mind. Discreetly, he grabs his phone and texts Mingi.

_Do you mind if Yeosang comes along?_

Mingi’s reply comes in the form of a bunch of suggestive emojis that Hongjoong promptly ignores, and he doesn’t ask Yeosang.

As it turns out, there was never a need to ask Yeosang whether he wanted to be part of it or not, since the body was found near his house, and as Mingi and Hongjoong walk up the hill, into the woods, they find Yeosang, carrying a bag of groceries.

Yeosang tilts his head, eyebrows raised in question.

“The body,” explains Mingi.

“Ah,” says Yeosang, nodding. “Well, have fun.”

“You should come,” Mingi says quickly. “Three is better than two.”

“Can’t say I’ve heard that one before, but sure, why not? I don’t have an early shift tomorrow.” He glances at Hongjoong, smiling. “Hi.”

“Hello.”

“Let me get these home and I’ll join you,” Yeosang continues, lifting the grocery bag up. “You can wait inside, if you’d like,” he offers, jerking his chin at the distant lights, behind trees, where his house is.

“Sure!” Mingi agrees immediately, excited.

Yeosang’s house doesn’t look as it had seven years ago. It looks appropriate for the twenty-first century. Although, there’s still many sepia and black and white photographs around.

Seonghwa is at home. He’s sprawled out on the couch, reading a book. He’s surprised at the unexpected visit.

“Oh, Hongjoong was it?” he inquires. He seems delighted upon seeing him again.

“Yes. How’s it going?” Hongjoong greets him very awkwardly.

“Good, glad to be home.” Seonghwa smiles. He promptly returns to his book while they enter the kitchen.

“Man, your cousin is hot,” Mingi comments, craning his neck to glance at Seonghwa some more.

Yeosang looks amused. “He’s taken. Married in fact.”

Mingi shrugs and continues his close inspection of Yeosang’s home, while the host empties his grocery bag.

“What about you, Yeosang? Are you taken?”

Hongjoong nearly chokes on air at the shameless question. He knows Mingi is asking for _his_ sake, without taking in regard that Hongjoong doesn’t even like Yeosang. _God_.

He entertains himself with a calendar on the fridge: there’s photographs of different forests and their wildlife.

“No,” Yeosang replies. “I’m not.”

“Anyone you got your eyes on?” Mingi continues his persistent line of questions.

Yeosang hesitates. “Um… Why are you asking?” He dodges the question easily.

“Just wondering.” Then, because Mingi is impossible, he adds, “Hongjoong isn’t taken either, if anyone was wondering.”

“Okay.”

“ _Mingi_ ,” Hongjoong says warningly, half in protest. He can’t resist to glance at Yeosang, who catches his eyes. He smiles in a sort of secret way. Hongjoong’s heart tumbles over. He attempts a smile back.

About half an hour later, they’re back in the forest.

At first it’s all nature so thick that they can’t see anything in front of them, even with the flashlights, and it leaves small scratches on Hongjoong’s bare arms and ankles. He hopes no insects get tangled in his hair or clothes, he’d hate for it to happen.

He’ll drop kick Mingi for having persuaded him to this absolute madness.

“What do you plan to do if you find the body?” Yeosang asks casually, as if they’re not actually trying to find half a dead body.

“Therapy,” Hongjoong mutters, grimacing.

“I haven’t thought of that… Call the cops, I guess,” Mingi replies. “I actually don’t go on these adventures expecting to _find_ something.” He laughs at Hongjoong’s glare and curses. “It’s just for the thrill of it—and to get Hong out of his apartment.”

Yeosang hums. “Do you know what half we’re looking for?”

“I… haven’t thought of that either,” Mingi admits.

“What if you find the killer instead?” Yeosang keeps asking.

“Dude, what is this, an interrogation? You’re worse than Hongjoong.”

“ _Hey_!” Hongjoong protests, shoving his tall friend into a tree. “Fuck you.”

Yeosang snorts. “I’m glad you asked me to tag along. It’s nice hanging out with you,” he says. The last bit he keeps his eyes on Hongjoong, who can feel the gears in his brain and heart turn and turn as he tries to analyze what this is supposed to mean.

Hongjoong trips, realizing just then he was unashamedly staring at Yeosang’s dark golden eyes, completely hypnotized. Yeosang catches him in time, his hands around Hongjoong’s waist and chest, pulling him up. Hongjoong glares at the thorns he tripped over and the rock he almost crashed into. Embarrassment pours out of him as he turns his head to face Yeosang, who is still holding him.

“Uh, thanks,” he says— _squeaks out, how terrible!_ —and ignores the heat that seeps through his shirt.

Yeosang removes his hands, his slender fingers leave a trail of fire, burning bright and openly on Hongjoong’s skin. It’s distressing how desperately he wants to have those hands back on his body.

Yeosang steps back, patting Hongjoong’s shoulder—it feels slightly condescending, as if he knows exactly what Hongjoong is thinking. “You should probably watch where you’re going,” he says, endlessly pleased and smug.

Hongjoong considers shoving Yeosang into a tree too. He doesn’t, but the thought stays with him.

“ _I am_!” he insists, lastly, walking quick so he catches up with Yeosang and Mingi.

Before he can reach them, he hears rustling sounds coming from his right, they grow in volume; whatever is hiding in them is approaching rapidly. He sees, then, a large shadow jump out. It’s a wolf, enormous, with gray fur and dark eyes. Nothing like those golden eyes he saw with Mingi that other night, which were intelligent and almost friendly. This one looks nearly ghostly, an empty look in its eyes.

Hongjoong reacts a second too late. The wolf jumps onto him, knocking him to the ground. He lands on soft grass and leaves, his flashlight scattering away.

“Hongjoong!” Yeosang cries, his voice is full of concern.

“Hong!” Mingi’s worried yell follows.

The breath of the wolf is hot and stinks of blood and God knows what, it’s unpleasant and almost makes Hongjoong vomit. He struggles under its heavy weight, the front claws of the wolf on his chest, not deep yet but he can feel their sharpness, pain shooting through him. He closes his eyes momentarily.

There’s a sudden sharp gasp, followed by Mingi whispering, completely undone, “Holy shit!”

Then a second wolf jumps the grey one, knocking it off Hongjoong. The sound of growling and fighting surrounds him, all he can see his Mingi in the distance, his flashlight pointing at the ground. There’s no sight of Yeosang, where he was standing before, there’s only his flashlight, flickering on the ground, and a pile of clothes.

Hongjoong swallows, trying to sit up. His chest hurts more now that the shock of having a wild wolf so close is gone.

“Mingi?” he calls out hesitantly.

The wolves are still fighting, but further away.

“Yeosang, he—“ Mingi stutters. “He turned into a wolf!” he exclaims, his voice full of awe and disbelief and shock. “Dude, Yeosang _turned into a wolf_ ,” he repeats.

Hongjoong desperately wants to pretend his friend has gone crazy, but it somehow makes sense to him. Right now, in the shock and near death experience, it sounds like the most plausible explanation.

Hongjoong’s too confused, shocked, awed to reply or make an attempt to calm Mingi down, who’s pacing around, gesturing wildly as he rambles on and on. He’s moving his flashlight around erratically like a concert’s focus: one moment it catches onto a bush, the next on the trees’ canopies, the next it’s in Hongjoong’s face, the next it catches on the two wolves in the far distance…

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Mingi mutters, staring with his mouth agape. “Should we go help…?” He glances down at Hongjoong, who’s still sitting on the ground. “Dude… Are you, like, okay?”

“What do you think?!” Hongjoong hisses. He’s shaking slightly, it’s not colder but it feels colder. He’s overcome with the sudden urge to cry and scream and punch someone—preferably punch Yeosang.

Mingi bends down and reaches out his hand for Hongjoong to take, and hauls him up, searching him for any wounds.

“Will you be all right?”

“Who knows?” Hongjoong shrugs. He needs a beer, or a nap, or both. He needs to sit down in his kitchenette with Yunho and have him talk some sense into Hongjoong, tell him this is all just a terrible and twisted nightmare. “Where’s Yeosang?” he asks after a beat of uncomfortable silence.

Mingi seems to notice the lack of wolves growling and snarling too, the woods around them uncharacteristically quiet. An unpleasant atmosphere settles in. Hongjoong shivers.

“Do you think he…?”

But he doesn’t dare to finish it.

Hongjoong doesn’t dare to think it.

With a resolved mind, he marches through the thick bushes and the tall grass until he reaches the small clearing where the wolves fought. It’s vacant now, a twisted branch hanging sadly from a tree and footprints in the soil are the only proof of their battle.

“ _Shit_ ,” Hongjoong whispers, the reality slowly sinking in.

Then, leaves rustle.

Mingi and Hongjoong brace themselves to face that terrible gray wolf again, but out of the darkness of the forest emerges a familiar wolf with golden eyes. _Yeosang_. He stares at them for a few seconds, as if to make sure they’re okay.

Hongjoong watches with terrible awe as the wolf turns into Yeosang in front of his very eyes, standing naked in the woods. There’s nearly not enough light to expose him, but it’s enough to peek his toned abs and chest, his defined thighs and calves… All over there are tattoos, depicting a forest. He recalls a faint memory, about the wolves being protectors of the forest.

Swiftly, Yeosang gets dressed. He rubs his nose, eyeing Mingi and Hongjoong with a pensive expression.

“Are you guys okay?” he asks.

“Dude, what the _fuck_?!” Mingi explodes. He gestures wildly at Yeosang, trying to find his words.

“Ah…” Yeosang scratches his neck awkwardly. “This is not how I thought this would go.”

“You’re a… _wolf_?! A werewolf?!”

“Both are valid descriptions,” Yeosang says slowly, shrugging. He glances at Hongjoong, as if he’s waiting for him to say something.

“Was the other wolf—the one that attacked Hong—also a werewolf?” Mingi asks.

“Yes, but a different kind. He’s consumed by anger, forgetting his humanity. He’s the one that attacked those two humans,” Yeosang explains.

Hongjoong can’t formulate a question or thought, he’s still way too stunned.

“Oh, man, this is crazy,” mutters Mingi, shaking his head. “Is everyone in your family, you know, a wolf?”

“Yes. We come from a long and ancient lineage of lycans. We’ve always lived in these woods, protecting them and the valley, until…” He hesitates, biting his bottom lip. Then shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter, we’re back now. We’re protectors of this valley.” He studies Hongjoong, his eyes stopping on the torn bits of his shirt where the grey wolf had clawed at his chest. “Are you okay? Hurt?”

Hongjoong inhales slowly. “I’m… fine,” he says at last. “Just processing.”

“Okay.”

“We should probably leave,” Mingi says. “This was a bad idea.”

“No shit,” mutters Hongjoong.

When they come back to Yeosang’s house, there’s a second car parked next to Seonghwa’s fancy looking one. Yeosang looks positively excited when he yanks the door open, bouncing inside. Hongjoong and Mingi follow him cautiously, still shocked about the events that occurred—one doesn’t just overcome the fact that werewolves are real so quickly.

From the kitchen someone assaults Yeosang, jumping into his arms with a joyous shriek. Behind that bundle of joy, comes a shockingly familiar face: intense dark eyes, and silky black hair that frames a face of sharp cheekbones and jawline.

“ _San_?!” say Mingi and Hongjoong at the same time, stunned.

San regards them, just as surprised. “Oh, hey,” he greets them. “Long time no see. I didn’t know Yeosang was bringing company.”

“It was unplanned,” Yeosang says, gently pushing the person hugging him away. Hongjoong realizes it’s Wooyoung. For once he doesn’t have crazily colored hair, it’s a dark brown, almost chin long, he wears a bandana to keep it out of his face.

He smiles at them as if they’ve been friends forever too. “Gosh, how you’ve changed!” he exclaims in the same fashion an aunt would do after years of not coming to the Christmas dinners. “It’s crazy we’re all here, isn’t it?”

With the very recent events, Hongjoong can’t help but to wonder if they know Yeosang’s secret. If they are possibly werewolves too.

“I… need a drink,” mutters Mingi.

“I can provide you with one,” San says, grinning. He beckons Mingi into the kitchen, where it appears Wooyoung and San have been making pizza.

“Yeosang, can we talk?” Hongjoong asks hesitantly.

Yeosang looks complicated for a split second before he nods, dragging Hongjoong into the living room. He closes the door quietly.

A memory flickers in Hongjoong’s mind, around three years ago, when he fixed Yeosang’s wounds on that same couch. It makes so much more sense now that he knows Yeosang’s truth a little better. The overall oddness surrounding him, his wounds that Halloween night, his mother lost in the woods after her husband’s death, his sudden disappearance at seventeen…

“So,” Yeosang starts, eyeing Hongjoong expectantly and warily, like he’s scared Hongjoong will strangle him. “What do you want to talk about?”

Hongjoong shoots him a pointed look.

“You’re… a wolf,” Hongjoong states. It still feels so surreal.

“Yes.”

Hongjoong lets himself fall onto the couch, Yeosang follows suit, although he leaves a distance between them. He’s still eyeing Hongjoong warily. Hongjoong can’t entirely discard the idea of punching him.

“Is this why you left three years ago?” he asks.

Yeosang holds his gaze, then adverts it. It’s obvious he won’t answer the question.

“Are you mad at me?” Is what Yeosang asks instead, his voice soft and careful.

“I can’t exactly be mad at you, now can I? It’s not as if you owe me any kind of explanation or information about your life, or anything at all. We’re not friends, so I can’t be mad at you—“

“I’d understand if you were. You’ve always been very straightforward with me. I kept secrets from you,” Yeosang interrupts him.

Hongjoong flinches. It’s not what he expected.

He studies Yeosang. He looks exactly the same as before, really, but Hongjoong believes he can see sunlight filtering through canopies in Yeosang’s eyes, and smell the wildness of the forest on his skin.

He should look the same, but Hongjoong can’t unsee the secret. The missing puzzle pieces rain down, they fall to form the Yeosang that’s sitting right in front of Hongjoong—a stranger and, simultaneously, Hongjoong’s never been closer to him. It should be a storm, chaos, he should be uncertain and scared, but in the midst of it, all he finds himself doing is stare wordlessly at Yeosang, his heart a drum and his throat dry as something begins to mold.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Yeosang whispers, suddenly serious. He looks at Hongjoong with apprehension, his hands trembling as he reaches them out toward Hongjoong with so much hesitance. “I can hear your quick heartbeat,” he explains. “I promise I won’t ever hurt you. I’m not like that gray wolf that attacked you.” He lowers his eyes onto Hongjoong’s torn t-shirt. When they flicker up, meeting Hongjoong’s steady gaze, his cheeks turn pink. “Speaking of which, you should change. I can lend you something.”

Hongjoong hums in agreement, spreading out his fingers to let Yeosang guide him.

“I’m not scared, by the way,” he says as they climb the staircase. “Not of you, anyway. But I was a little mad.”

Yeosang lets out a sigh. “Well, that’s good to know. That you’re not scared, not that you’re mad at me.” He laughs nervously. “Any way to fix that?”

“I’ll get to keep the shirt you give me. You owe me.”

Yeosang stumbles as he opens his bedroom door. His cheeks are now an impossible pink, eyes wide and dark. “Uh… Sure?” he squeaks out. It’s very uncharacteristic for him.

Hongjoong walks past him, pleased.

Yeosang’s room now is a stark contrast to the one he had when Hongjoong visited him all those years ago. The walls are white and bare of any posters or photographs. There’s a simple bed with standard Ikea sheets; in fact, all of the room’s furniture holds a kind of impersonality to it.

“We’re still settling in,” Yeosang offers in explanation.

The only familiar item Hongjoong spots is the gaming console on the ground, in front of a flatscreen TV.

Yeosang lingers in front of his closet, then pulls out a thin, purple t-shirt. It has yellow letters on top.

“‘Bite me’?” Hongjoong reads. “Really?”

“Uh… It was given to me as a joke, I rarely wear it. It should be clean.”

Hongjoong takes it, it smells faintly of Yeosang.

He’s quick to pull is torn t-shirt over his head, discarding it. He catches Yeosang looking at him, a little perplexed and frozen, only his eyes are moving, growing darker and darker until they’re no longer golden. Hongjoong shivers, holding the purple t-shirt loosely in his hand.

He should move, get dressed, but he can’t move either. He’s captivated by the underlying desperation hidden in Yeosang’s eyes. He nearly chokes on it. His heart twists and turns in his chest restlessly.

Yeosang’s lips move, Hongjoong doesn’t catch what he’s saying.

“What,” he croaks out, only half hearing his own voice, his heartbeat is louder than anything else.

Yeosang blinks. He turns away, stumbling over a loose cord of an X-Box controller.

“Nothing!” he says, his voice rather high pitched.

The previous atmosphere is gone, the night’s darkness and coldness becomes very present in the bedroom. He shivers. Quickly, Hongjoong pulls the purple t-shirt over his head. His heart is beating so fast, and he curses it, because, didn’t Yeosang say he could hear his heartbeat?

A string of very colorful curse words form in his mind as he tries to calm himself down.

“All done,” he says, flattening the creases in the shirt.

“Cool.” Yeosang sounds uncharacteristically blank.

Downstairs, Wooyoung grabs Yeosang’s wrists and drags him away.

“We have to talk,” Wooyoung says. He smiles kindly at Hongjoong. “Mind if I steal him away for a second?”

“Not at all.”

Hongjoong finds Mingi seated in the kitchen, beer in hand, together with San and Seonghwa, they’re talking animatedly as music plays from a portable speaker. When Seonghwa sees him, he beckons him over.

“Fancy one?” he asks, gesturing at a six pack of beer.

Hongjoong shakes his head. “ _Someone_ has to drive us back safely.”

“I’m sure you could sleep over. There’s enough empty rooms in this house,” San says.

“No, it’s fine.” Hongjoong feels a shiver run down his spine. The last thing he needs is to sleep here, in the same house as Yeosang, thinking and thinking, his mind a cacophony of desperation and confusion. He addresses Mingi, “Ready to leave?”

“Sure.” Mingi nods, tipping his head back to finish the beer. “Where’s the toilet?” he asks Seonghwa, but it’s San who answers.

“I’ll show you.”

“I’ll tell Yeosang we’re leaving,” Hongjoong says, exiting the kitchen.

“I’ll… stay back to make pizza,” Seonghwa says with a sigh, clearing the kitchen counter to prepare it for cooking.

Hongjoong moves through the house, walking through the living room, where Yeosang and Wooyoung have disappeared to. He sees them from the window, sitting on a bench, they seem to be deeply into a conversation. Hongjoong is about to turn his back on the back porch, when he overhears part of their conversation. 

“The identities of the bodies have been made public,” whispers Wooyoung, his voice holds a slightly scolding tone. “They’re hunters, Yeo.”

“Yes.”

“They have come for revenge. Let them deal with the rogue werewolf.”

Yeosang shakes his head. “I can’t. They’re the same ones.”

“Are you sure?”

“I am. Seonghwa is too,” Yeosang insists. “They’re one of the reasons we came back. We have to deal with them once and for all.”

Wooyoung lets out a complicated sigh. “If you insist… But be careful. They… They’re good at what they do, and they don’t take into consideration that we’re humans too.”

“I know. I know, Woo. We got this.”

“What are your other reasons for coming back? You surprised San and I. Don’t get me wrong, we’re glad you’ve come back, but… It’s unexpected.”

“I missed home, and,” Yeosang hesitates, “I think we’re meant to be here, to protect the valley, like it was in the legends.”

“You still think that dream you had was the moon essence talking to you?”

“Yes, I know it was her.”

“ _Yeosang_.” Wooyoung sounds mildly torn.

“I’m _meant_ to be here. I’ll deal with the hunters, and the rogue werewolf. You and San don’t have to worry yourselves with it. You can leave again,” he says sharply. Hongjoong can see his shoulders drawn up, hurt.

“Do you know who the rogue werewolf is?” Wooyoung asks after a short silence. “Have you seen them or caught their scent?”

“Not yet. It’s as if their scent is masked. Almost like they’re invisible,” Yeosang explains, mildly frustrated. “The only time I have actually seen them was tonight, and... I don’t know, Wooyoung, it was very strange.”

“Since we’re already here. We will help. You are not alone.”

Wooyoung studies Yeosang. He _boops_ his nose, immediately breaking the seriousness of the situation. Hongjoong catches half of Yeosang’s crooked smile, the other half submerged in darkness.

“Just like the old times, huh?”

Wooyoung smiles too. “Better than the old times,” he says. “At least your crush now actually pays attention to you.”

Yeosang shoves him. “Shut up!”

The way they are smiling at one another makes something flare up inside Hongjoong and he retrieves from the door and window, back further into the house. The scene looks too intimate.

Mingi is waiting for him by the entrance hall, leaning against the door frame. San hovers near him, his eyebrows raise when he catches sight of Hongjoong.

“All good?” he asks curiously. “You look pale.”

“I’m fine,” he replies, then addresses Mingi, “We can leave.”

“Well, it was nice meeting you again, San,” Mingi says, grinning a little stupidly, Hongjoong thinks—all flickering eyes and shy gestures.

“Likewise, Mingi,” San says, squeezing the taller’s shoulder, a wink falling from his eyes. Mingi’s grin widens. Hongjoong pulls a grimace, glancing at Seonghwa who appears to be delighted by this development. San looks at Hongjoong then. “You too, Hongjoong. It’s been way too damn long.”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong breathes. He remembers them as kids: Mingi, San, Yeosang, and him running around as their laughter filled the air, so free and unworried. He gives a half insincere smile, waves his hand at San and Seonghwa, and walks out of the house with Mingi in tow.

When they’ve put distance between themselves and the house, Mingi turns toward Hongjoong.

“Are you really okay?”

“I’m _fine_ ,” he insists.

From the hill there’s a splendid view over the valley below on the left, and on the right the small town expands. The almost half moon is hanging low over the valley, now that Hongjoong knows its power, and the secrets these forests and valley hide, it takes his breath away. Distantly, he remembers the odd dreams he’s been having recently of that shimmering woman talking to a kid hidden in the shadows of the forest, he almost expects to see them.

Their small town is quite infamous for its summer celebrations, they hold many activities—for young and old alike—in the name of the Saint. As a kid, Hongjoong loved them, but as he grew older he participated less and less, forgetting about them. He’s never gone to the parties, always too young, and then he never had anyone to go with.

He stands outside Jongho’s flat, nervously running a hand through his hair. Yunho was kind enough to help him style it. He was dressed in loose black linen pants and a colorful sleeveless shirt tucked into them, with an oversized gray flannel shirt thrown over his naked shoulders.

Jongho buzzes him in, but Yeosang is the one to welcome him at the door. He smiles genially and pulls him in, Hongjoong catches a faint whiff of alcohol in his breath.

“Hey,” he greets Yeosang.

“Glad you made it!”

Hongjoong looks around the flat curiously. There’s not that many people there, and he’s surprised to find Wooyoung and San between the guests.

“I brought booze,” Hongjoong says, holding up a bottle of rum-cola.

“Excellent!” Yeosang drags him to the kitchen. “Jongho is off somewhere to… Who knows.“ He shrugs, and shoves a beer bottle into Hongjoong’s hands. He stares at him for a moment, taking him in. “You look nice,” he decides.

“Thanks.”

Hongjoong takes a brief second to study Yeosang too. He’s dressed as casually as ever: black jeans and a white, simple t-shirt with some abstract design. His blonde, wavy hair is styled messily—Hongjoong has a sudden, crazy thought: run his hand through it, tug at it—and he’s wearing a strong scented cologne, it suits him.

“You too,” Hongjoong says, looking away quickly. If he stares for too long he’ll get trapped, he’ll do something stupid.

Yeosang grins widely. He grabs Hongjoong’s wrist and drags him back into the living room. “Woo and San are playing drinking games!”

“Oh, God,” Hongjoong mutters, already knowing what awaits him. He’s gone to enough college parties to know what twenty-something year olds get up to.

“It’ll be fun!” Yeosang insists. He’s smiling still, and he looks…

Hongjoong holds his breath.

The drinking games pass by in a blur, Hongjoong’s luck is on his side that night, he doesn’t have to drink much. Wooyoung is hammered, hanging off San and sputtering nonsense. Yeosang has taken many shots, but he seems to be quite sober still. Hongjoong wonders if werewolves are affected differently by alcohol.

Jongho breaks the party apart, urging everyone out of his apartment to the main plaza of their village for the _actual_ party. The DJ’s music thrums through the narrow cobblestone streets in the heart of the small town, the sound of people talking and laughing hidden underneath it.

Yeosang is talking with Jongho about work anecdotes, but he turns around every now and then to shoot grins at Hongjoong; eyes bright and so clear, as if Hongjoong is all there is to look at in that beautiful summer night. It makes it very hard for Hongjoong to walk in a straight line and listen to whatever it is San has to say.

The plaza is crowded with teenagers and young adults, some older ones mixed between the colorful crowd. Everyone is dancing—or attempting to—and socializing. Something in Hongjoong’s chest cracks a little.

Suddenly, Yeosang grabs his forearms and drags him to the makeshift bar counter build into the side of the town’s church. It’s ironic, Hongjoong supposes.

“I’ll invite you to a beer!” Yeosang chimes over the loud music, his lips close to Hongjoong’s right ear, his fingers still around Hongjoong’s forearm.

Hongjoong shivers.

“I think I’m gonna’ pass,” he answers. Yeosang tilts his head in confusion. Hongjoong leans in close, moves the golden waves away and repeats his words, “Pass.”

Yeosang is staring at him with wide eyes when he leans back, partly in surprise, partly dark and filled with an expression that tugs at Hongjoong’s abdomen.

“Okay,” Yeosang says, though Hongjoong can’t hear him, only from reading his lips.

For a while, they stand by the bar counter observing the crowd with amusement, pointing out the coordinated mess that San and Wooyoung are on the dance floor. Yeosang is mouthing along to the lyrics of the different songs, bobbing his head. He’s nursing a second beer, Hongjoong having gotten rum-cola for himself.

A song with an aloof and catchy beat begins to play, and Yeosang’s eyes light up immediately. He grabs Hongjoong’s wrist, nearly making him spill his drink, and drags him out onto the dance floor, near Wooyoung and San’s stumbling figures.

“I love this song!” Yeosang exclaims.

At a lack of words, Hongjoong nods.

He’s surprised by the way Yeosang moves his body, it’s subtle and reserved, he’s clearly holding back, but he _can_ dance. It’s clear in the way he doesn’t miss a beat, the obvious enjoyment he has for moving his body to the music, incorporating a silly dance move once in a while to make Hongjoong either crack up or roll his eyes in (fond) exasperation. And Hongjoong can’t help himself when he starts to move along, intoxicated by Yeosang’s good mood.

Hongjoong’s mind is clear as a creek on a spring day while he dances with Yeosang. Their bodies move to the bass heavy music with barely any separation as the rhythm slithers around them like smoke, encompassing them wholly until they are focused on one another.

Even without the alluring music, the electricity cackling between the little space that separates them, Hongjoong wouldn’t have been able to look away.

He’s greatly engrossed in the gaze that pins him and studies him, those dark eyes with a ring of golden fire careful in their exploration. Hongjoong chest feels as if someone is raking their nails over it, undoing him.

Yeosang’s eyes are a power of their own, moving Hongjoong. Shivers travel from the nape of his neck down to the base of his back, jumping and doing summersaults through his spine as if there’s reason to celebrate. He wants to arch into Yeosang, decimate that separation between them, surrender to rhythm. Were it anyone else, Hongjoong would do it. He would meet that enticing mouth, wet and warm lips meeting his own, compliant and heavenly.

But this is Yeosang, which makes this desire so much crasser, and his erratic heartbeat wilder.

_Yeosang, Yeosang, Yeosang._

Hongjoong can sense in those dark eyes fixed on him, the hands Yeosang has loosely on Hongjoong’s waist, the way he licks his lips repeatedly, his eyes flickering down to Hongjoong’s, that Yeosang wants some of those fireworks to explode on and beneath his skin too.

“ _Hongjoong_ ,” Yeosang says, or whispers—well, Hongjoong _thinks_ he does, from the way he’s moving his lips.

Those shivers reach the tips of his hairs, dying as a sighed exhale between his lips. He wants Yeosang to move in close, catch this desperate breath, but Yeosang sways back when Hongjoong sways forward.

Yeosang licks his lips, eyes flickering around Hongjoong’s face, wonderment dancing everywhere in his face.Hongjoong stares at him starstruck, and suddenly Yeosang is close again, his lips brushing the shell of Hongjoong’s ear.

“Wanna’ get out of here?”

He nods as nerves surge through him, making his knees grow weak and his stomach flutter; with tightness in his abdomen, fire in his lugs, he lets Yeosang guide him through the crowd.

They walk in silence through the heart of the town, all made of old buildings and cobblestone streets, history’s written into each crevice and fissure. Every once in a while, Yeosang’s shoulder bumps into Hongjoong’s, making his heart double over and intake a sharp breath, and every time, Hongjoong looks at Yeosang, who doesn’t seem to notice or care. It’s frustrating Hongjoong.

Can’t Yeosang just shove him against one of these old houses, there’s enough narrow back alleys, and kiss him senseless?Can’t he just take Hongjoong’s face in his hands, tug at his hair, and blaze a fire with his lips over Hongjoong’s jawline, neck, collarbones…?

Hongjoong needs Yeosang to _really_ rock his world, he’s realizing he’s been waiting for this to happen, his heart hammering in his chest the more he thinks about it. His cheeks warm because Yeosang is right next to him, he probably can hear Hongjoong’s erratic heartbeat. Hongjoong hopes werewolves can’t read minds too; he’d be doomed.

They find themselves on an old path that leads to Yeosang’s house, Hongjoong realizes, by the edge of the town, between civilization and the wild, wild forest. It’s quiet here, the DJ’s music only a very low bass that could very well be Hongjoong’s own heartbeat.

The air is suddenly parted by a whistling sound, a knife flying past them until it lodges into a tree nearby.

Hongjoong yelps, eyeing the dark night from where the knife came. Yeosang is suddenly wide awake, not inebriated at all.

“Hunters,” he hisses, frowning with worry.

He grabs Hongjoong’s wrist and drags him to the side, into a group of trees and bushes standing close together, creating a shadowed hiding spot. Yeosang pulls him toward a tree, pressing him against it, moving himself in front of Hongjoong, as if to shelter him. He places his index finger over his own lips, then Hongjoong’s, indicating him to stay quiet.

Hongjoong tries to, but he can’t help the gasp when he sees the shady people he saw with Yeosang about a month ago, at the side of the road. 

The knife-woman holds one in her left hand, looking around. “Damn it, I swear they were just here,” she says.

“We’ll get them another time. There’s no hurry,” says a man. It’s not the same one, but he is just as terrible looking. The gun strapped to his waist glimmers in the street lamp. Hongjoong swallows thickly. “Besides, we don’t know if that scrawny guy is a wolf too. He wasn’t listed anywhere.”

Knife-woman shrugs. “He could be new.”

“I want them to pay,” says the third one, their voice filled with dangerous rage. “They killed Hyuk.”

“We will get revenge, but it’s better to wait. Get them all instead of just one,” says knife-woman.

The hunters look around for a few more seconds, talking quietly between them before the saunter off.

A minute later, Hongjoong’s heart is still loud—partly from Yeosang’s proximity, partly from the hunters.

“Holy shit,” he mutters, peeking out from behind Yeosang’s arm, scanning the edge of the town. “They’re gone.”

“Yeah.”

Yeosang steps away, putting distance between them. All the magic from the night, the electric tension that was climbing all night has completely vanished—like the mist that catches between grass blades before a strong gust of wind passes through the valley.

Yeosang studies him carefully, his eyes are still mostly dark. Hongjoong’s heart catches in his throat.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong breathes; but he’s a mess of exposed and high wired nerves running wildly as he realizes there’s no doubt, no distance, no going back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oho, thoughts??


	4. iv.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeosang runs his hands up and down Hongjoong’s thighs, staring up at him with awe and dark eyes; his lips are redder than ever before and so, so inviting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> soo this chapter will have smut in it, for those that don't want to read it, it starts at: "Yeosang presses against him fervently"; and ends at: "When Hongjoong comes down from the high"
> 
> for those that are reading aha, this was my first time writing anything like it, so it might not be that great lmao i apologize

_“For too long they have walked our forests—haunted them. Hunted us.” The woman flickers dangerous, as if a thunderstorm is passing through her and turning her into a dangerous night. “Child of the wolves, gather your siblings, your allies. This fight is far from over.”_

* * *

July arrives: it’s undoubtedly and impossibly summer now. Sweetness and dampness hangs in the air, and a dream-like state surrounds them. Cicadas are singing night and day, robbing all sense of tranquility and quietude. It’s so mystifying.

Oh, how Hongjoong’s in love with it.

But July doesn’t just bring heat, there’s a new full moon right at their doormats. With it, the tension of the rogue werewolf is back. If the last full moon there were two kills, undoubtedly more would follow. And he can’t get the conversation he’s overheard between Yeosang and Wooyoung out of his head: that this rogue wolf is hard to catch and identify, that the two found bodies are of ex-hunters—hunters, Hongjoong realizes, that once caused a lot of pain to the wolves of the valley—and that the rogue wolf might not be the biggest threat stalking the night.

Hongjoong isn’t sure what worries him more: the impending full moon and its loose rogue werewolf, or the hunters.

After Yeosang and Hongjoong’s unexpected encounter with the hunters at the edge of the town a few days ago, there’s been a different kind of tension swirling the air. Hongjoong is sure it’s not the first time Yeosang has encountered these hunters, and he believes they might be tied to Yeosang’s disappearing three years ago too. Tied to the mysterious and terrible death of Yeosang’s father, and the way his mother ran through the forest for weeks, completely unhinged and torn by pain. He can only assume that these hunters were the reason behind the death of Yeosang’s father.

For a crazy moment, he thinks perhaps Yeosang was the one to kill those hunters, and he’s blaming it on a rogue wolf. _No, no that’s not possible._ Hongjoong has seen first hand the brutality of that rogue wolf, its gray fur and dark eyes not matching at all Yeosang’s wolf form, all light browns and golden colors.

He can’t help the spine-chilling sensation that these hunters aren’t up to any good, that they have come for more than just the rogue werewolf; and that soon _this_ will change everything for him. He thinks back to those strange dreams of his, of that shimmering woman—like a hologram—that reminds him so much of the moon. She’s never aware of Hongjoong in his dreams, but Hongjoong is never hiding. It’s as if they can’t fathom one another, not expecting each other’s existence—blissfully unaware or willfully ignorant.

Over the past weeks, Hongjoong and Mingi have found themselves involved with the wolves of the valley. After Hongjoong revealed he used to do archery, and Mingi’s over all enthusiasm to help them—he was more than interested to come to their aid, helping the research day and night—the two have been included in the meetings leading up to the full moon, which was now only days away. And so Hongjoong has found himself tethered to these fantastical creatures through Mingi, though he can’t deny that there’s a sense of belonging that comes with it, and then there’s him growing closer to Yeosang.

It’s given him a thrill.

As he sits in his living room with Yunho by his side—oblivious Yunho—he glances at the moon outside. The world isn’t what it used to be. Once its secrets are uncovered every shade of color, every stick and stone becomes something new. Hongjoong holds a new respect for it.

“What are you thinking about?” Yunho asks him suddenly, turning away from the TV.

“This and that,” Hongjoong mumbles. He has thought about sharing the truth with Yunho, but he’s scared including him in this crazy world will put him into danger too.

“Is ‘this and that’ maybe one Yeosang?” Yunho inquires cheekily.

Hongjoong rolls his eyes. “What has Mingi told you?”

“Oh, nothing much, just the incredibly unbearable UST between you two.” Yunho grins.

“UST?”

“Unresolved sexual tension, of course!”

Hongjoong chokes. _Yikes_.

He thinks back to their almost kiss during that party, the closeness of their bodies and wants. Perhaps they’ve been very obvious—at least him.

“Has Mingi told you about his own tension and stupid flirting with San?” Hongjoong asks and crosses his arms in front of his chest.

“Huh, he failed to mention that,” Yunho says, scratching his chin. “I will have to ask him about it, that fucker.”

Pleased, Hongjoong turns back to the movie, no more questions coming in his direction as Yunho is furiously texting Mingi. He does wonder though how obvious he really is, if he is as obvious to Yeosang— _probably_ , he reckons; Yeosang said he can hear my heartbeat—and if that tension will ever become something else.

Something real, palpable. Will he ever feel this tension explode on his lips?

The night of the full moon, they drive with Mingi’s car because Hongjoong doesn’t trust his own car, even if Jongho said it’s in working conditions. The moon looks bigger somehow, and whiter than Hongjoong ever remembers seeing it. He wonders if it’s because of that magic, that the valley and the forests around are influenced by the moon’s essence—as Yeosang called it. Something tugs at Hongjoong’s stomach, begging him to fall on his knees and pay his respect to it.

When they arrive at the house they spot Seonghwa’s car and San’s car parked outside.

“You’re late.” Wooyoung receives them at the door, opening it wide for them. He seems a little annoyed. “Everyone is already waiting in the living room.”

Hongjoong is propelled to sit on the armrest of the couch, Yeosang is standing next to him, his arms crossed in front of his chest. He’s chewing on his bottom lip nervously. Hongjoong very pointedly does not look at it, and he very pointedly does not remember the night about two weeks ago when they had danced so close together, when Hongjoong thought he would kiss that mouth.

He has been thinking about it a lot since then. It could have been so easy. _So, so easy,_ he thinks. After all, all he needed to do was to lean forward and kiss him, but with Yeosang it’s anything but easy. His heart stops working the way it should, he becomes too aware of his whole body and his surroundings; he feels so silly.

“Hong?” he hears Mingi call his name. “You there?”

Hongjoong blinks repeatedly, realizing with embarrassment he got caught staring at Yeosang.

“Um, sure,” he mutters and glances at the other people in the room. Thankfully, it seems they’re not fully aware of his terrible mishap. “What is it?”

“I was wondering if you wanted coffee too?” Seonghwa asks. “You know, before the night begins.”

“Yes, please!” He _really_ needs a good cup of coffee to clear his mind. Curse Yeosang and his ability to make Hongjoong so unfocused!

“Excellent.” Seonghwa glances at Yeosang briefly before exiting the living room.

“Did you hear any of that meeting?” Yeosang asks. It’s innocent enough, but when Hongjoong looks up he can see a playfulness in his eyes that sends shivers down his spine.

“I did,” he hisses, and sits up straight so he can glare at Yeosang from a more eye-to-eye level. He’s not entirely lying, he’s heard some words here and there, and they’ve gone through the plan before. Yeosang is looking at him with a subtle smile, his eyebrows half drawn up. It’s cocky, yet at the same time—fond? Hongjoong looks away quickly. “I’ll go get my bow from Mingi’s car.”

He shoots up, his skin crawling.

The fresh air clears his mind until he remembers his teammate for the night _is_ Yeosang.

Of course, this is all thanks to Mingi, who insisted they make teams of two, immediately teaming up with San. It didn’t come as a surprise when Hongjoong ended up with Yeosang, at this point he is firmly convinced the universe has it out for him.

Secretly, he is a bit glad he’s teaming up with Yeosang, but he would never tell this Mingi and give him the satisfaction of being right. His friend doesn’t know of the tension between them, their proximity during the party at the town’s plaza. Though, Hongjoong ponders with mild horror, it might be that Mingi can sense it; maybe Hongjoong isn’t as subtle as he’d like to be.

With the bow and quiver lazily slung over his shoulder blades, he trudges back into the house and knocks right into Seonghwa, who is carrying their coffees. Naturally, about 80% of that coffee lands directly on Hongjoong.

” _Fuck_!” Hongjoong hisses, taking the fabric of his shirt between his index finger and thumb, separating it from his skin so it doesn’t burn him, but the damage has been done. “I’m so sorry,” he mumbles as he notices the stain on the floor. Embarrassment is consuming him terribly.

Seonghwa is equally as apologetic. “I’m so sorry, I should have looked if someone was coming…”

Yeosang finds them like that, apologizing and trying to lessen the damage. He laughs silently, which Hongjoong does not appreciate.

“It’s just coffee, relax.” He gestures at Hongjoong to follow. “Come with me, I’ll lend you a new shirt.”

Seonghwa stares after them, eyebrows raised. “Woo! San!” he calls out. “Help me clean this mess!”

A chorus of _ugh’s_ follow his words.

Yeosang’s room looks about the same except one wall is painted in a dark shade of purple now, pots of paint and plastic covers all pushed into a corner. The window is wide open, a summer breeze bringing the sweet scent of pine trees and the songs of the cicadas. Yeosang is bent forward, searching for a t-shirt as Hongjoong stands behind, awkwardly eyeing the coffee stain on his button up.

“I have a shirt in my bag,” Hongjoong says slowly, remembering he packed it as he would most likely be sleeping over; Mingi and him too tired to drive home later.

Yeosang shakes his head. “It’s alright, I have enough to lend you.” Suddenly, he giggles, his shoulders shaking. “I guess this is our thing: me giving you my shirts.”

Hongjoong can feel the subtle heat in his cheeks, not just due to the comment, but with the fabric of the nearly translucent white t-shirt spread over his tan back, Hongjoong can see Yeosang’s back tattoos faintly: different moon phases tattooed along his spine—each vertebra holds a different moon.

“How come you can turn into a wolf at will? I thought it was a full moon thing,” Hongjoong asks to divert his attention away from what he’s seeing, and the burning in his heart and chest.

Yeosang turns his head, his golden waves messily moving with him. He pulls out a clean flannel shirt, he holds it up in question. Hongjoong nods.

“Because I am in control of it,” Yeosang answers then, turning his head away to give him some privacy. Hongjoong remembers the last time he changed in Yeosang’s bedroom, his skin flickers with the memory. “If you practice, it’s possible to control your transformations, but even I struggle sometimes, especially around full moon. It becomes harder to control then,” he explains. “The myth that we only transform during full moon, or that we can’t control ourselves, is mostly fake. It’s true that new wolves struggle on a full moon night, and it is true some can lose their humanity—like the grey wolf, I suppose. Just like humans, wolves come in all shapes and forms…”

“Never thought of it that way, that even mythical and fantastical creatures could vary.”

Yeosang smiles. “I suppose not many do.”

When Hongjoong’s done, Yeosang eyes him appreciatively. Hongjoong’s skin feels like it’s on fire.

“Here, you should wear this too.” Yeosang hands him a thin leather jacket. “I really like this flannel shirt. If you encounter the wolf again, this should protect you some.”

“Thanks.” Hongjoong put the jacket on, it’s slightly too big on his narrow shoulders.

His heart lunges as he notices it smells so impossibly of Yeosang; it’s obviously well worn by him. Hongjoong’s hands tremble and he’s quick to shove them into the jacket’s pockets.

“We should we head back down.”

Yeosang hums. “Yeah, they’ll wonder where we’ve disappeared to.”

As midnight rolls around, Hongjoong finds himself walking the woods alongside Yeosang.The forest is simultaneously scarier and less scary ever since he has learned its secrets. With his bow and quiver around his shoulder blades, and Yeosang walking by his side, it’s definitely not as intimidating.

Rustling sounds, light footsteps on dry leaves. Hongjoong reacts fast, grabbing an arrow and tensing is bow. He hasn’t done this in a while, only picked it up recently to practice just in case. His arm hurts a little, it requires so much more strength than he remembers.

He glances around attentively.

Yeosang makes a strange noise. “Easy,” he says, putting a hand on Hongjoong’s own. “That was just a rabbit.”

“How can you tell?” Hongjoong lowers his arm, putting the arrow back, and glances at Yeosang expectantly, eyebrows raised.

“I can smell it,” he replies.

Hongjoong grimaces and readjusts his quiver and bow around his shoulders.

“You know, it’s mildly threatening that you know archery,” Yeosang mutters as he keeps walking.

Hongjoong arches his brows. “Why? Are you scared?”

“No. Not scared, it’s about something else.”

“What exactly?”

“Uh…” Yeosang licks his lips, his gaze scattering over Hongjoong’s form, then over his face. “Maybe I’ll tell you one day.”

Hongjoong squints his eyes, not appreciating this vagueness. Before he can argue, though, they spot Wooyoung and Seonghwa running through the abundant foliage, waking a flutter of insects in their way. Seonghwa lets out a short howl, like a warning of some sort.

Yeosang’s shoulders tense. “ _Shit_.”

“What is it?”

“The wolf is coming.”

Hongjoong grabs an arrow, readying his bow again.

He scans the area, it is way too dark for him, even with the full moon breaking through the dense branches overhead, and the flashlight attached to his shoulder. He hears it though, heavy footsteps, leaves crunching underneath. Seonghwa and Wooyoung are waiting by another clearing ahead, watchful and tense.

Yeosang is in his wolf form now too. He glances at Hongjoong, then he sniffs the air.

It all happens very quickly.

The gray wolf jumps out of his hiding, he’s quick and brutal. Hongjoong manages to shoot an arrow, but the wolf swerves out of its way, tackling Yeosang in the process. Then he’s back in the thick and dark greenery, camouflaging with the night.

Hongjoong swipes his forehead, sweat pouring down after the tense moment and the summer’s heat. His damp t-shirt is clinging to his skin. He glances at Yeosang, who’s on the ground and watching him as if to make sure he’s fine.

“All good,” Hongjoong reassures him. “Are you hurt?”

Yeosang shakes his head, the movement miniscule.

The rogue wolf howls from a distance, it pierces the dense forest, night birds lifting off the trees, insects roaring loudly, a gust of wind carries it all over to where Hongjoong is standing with Yeosang. They exchange a glance, then Yeosang just jumps into the deep woods, leaving Hongjoong utterly alone.

“ _Yeosang_!” he calls out, but all he hears are his retreating footsteps, followed by other footsteps—Hongjoong hopes they’re Seonghwa and Wooyoung’s. “God damn it!”

He readies another arrow and ventures through the bushes, away from the small clearing, and toward the direction he’s seen Yeosang and the gray wolf disappear to. It’s nowhere near where Seonghwa and Wooyoung were waiting, the two wolves are trying to follow Yeosang’s trail as best as possible too.

Howling and growling seems to come from every direction now, the entire forest awake with something ancient. Hongjoong’s shoulders are tense, not really for his own safety, he worries more about Yeosang.

He remembers a distant dream he had of a woman that looked like the moon talking to a child of the wolves. He’s not sure why he’s remembering it now, but the words and the distorted and abstract images he recalls from the dream are suddenly burning on the front of his mind, like a warning.

He manages to march through the dark green vastness until he finds Yeosang and the gray wolf at a small clearing, a large rock rising tall into the sky. It looks strangely familiar. A little creek runs by the rock, disappearing farther into the forest.

Vaguely, Hongjoong realizes he has never ventured this far into these woods. The lack of trails and little pebble towers give him the impression that no human has truly ever explored the forest around the valley—that it’s uncharted, _untouched_ , and more dangerous than he initially realized.

Yeosang and the gray wolf are tangled in a match underneath the rock, which shelters them from the moonlight. The grass on the clearing is almost blue, a sea of small flowers expands around, their white petals reflect the moonlight.

Hongjoong holds his breath, the word magic circling his mind. He thinks of his dreams, that translucent woman. He feels as though she is present in that moment, deciding over the fate of the wolves.

Suddenly, a whistle pierces the night as a knife shoots out from the thick woods, missing Yeosang’s form by a few centimeters. The hunters linger opposite from Hongjoong, they are only shadows, but Hongjoong knows they’re the same three people they’d seen about two weeks ago, at the edge of the town.

Yeosang and the gray wolf don’t seem to notice, still tangled with one another as they battle for—life? Honor? Revenge?

Hongjoong can’t quite tell, and he can’t tell who is winning, but he knows if he doesn’t get them to move, to break apart, the hunters might end both of their lives. The sound of a gun going off galvanizes him. The bullet seems to miss, but both wolves snap out of their fight, heads turned toward the hunters, snarling menacingly.

Then, Hongjoong does something idiotic: he runs out from his hiding spot, in front of Yeosang, tackling him.

The gray wolf takes this as a chance to flee, and the hunters cease their fire.

“There’s a human!” one of them hisses.

“So, what?”

But their voices fade away with their footsteps, retreating quickly toward where they came from. _Assholes_ , Hongjoong thinks grimly. He wonders what their real purpose of coming back is, if it really was to protect the civilians of the town or to take out all wolves—regardless of whether they are good or bad.

Yeosang shakes Hongjoong off, glaring at him. Hongjoong puts up his hands; even if he knows this wolf is Yeosang, he’s still intimidating.

Someone appears form the bushes, startling wolf and human. It’s Mingi, who’s dragging an injured San with him. Hongjoong averts his eyes. He shrugs off his backpack, unzipping it: inside there are clothes for the wolves. Hongjoong helps Mingi in dressing San.

“He needs to go to the hospital,” Hongjoong says, studying the bullet wound. He looks up at Mingi, whose face is shuttered close. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. The hunters came out of nowhere. They had these flash bolts, I was blinded. San, he—“ But Mingi shakes his head. He’s frowning. “He followed them, when he came back, he was injured.”

“I called Seonghwa and Wooyoung,” Yeosang says, zipping his hoodie close. He’s shaking his blonde hair, twigs are caught in it. When his eyes meet Hongjoong’s, he seems angry. Hongjoong tenses, glaring back. “They’ll take San to the hospital.” He looked at Hongjoong. “Mingi and you are coming home with me.”

Wooyoung and Seonghwa drove San to the hospital, while Mingi crashed in Seonghwa’s bedroom, the night had been very excitable to him. Now, it’s just Hongjoong alone with Yeosang in the big house, an uncomfortable aura surrounding them. The failure of the night hangs heavily over them.

Yeosang has helped Hongjoong bandage his arm, where the gray wolf scraped him, and given him plasters for his fingers, but Hongjoong refused them. He doesn’t like plasters or gloves or anything that robs him of the sensibility in his fingers.

The house is extremely quiet compared to the previous havoc of having six adults in it preparing for a hunt. There’s such an absolute silence up at the little hill the house stands on, far away enough from the small town, that all sounds come from the woods and if those have fallen asleep, there’s nothing.

The forest is still frightened and stunned of the fights that happened in it tonight.

Hongjoong believes if he’s quiet enough, he could hear the roots below the house move and grow.

“Shower?” Yeosang offers tiredly.

Hongjoong nods gratefully. He’s still angry at Yeosang for launching himself into the danger just like that, and he knows Yeosang is angry at him for jumping out onto the clearing when the hunters made an appearance.

Their angers are colliding, both needing a breather.

“You can take Seonghwa’s bathroom,” Yeosang says curtly, pointing at the last door in the long corridor upstairs. “There should be clean towels and shampoo in there.”

Hongjoong nods before he walks to Seonghwa’s room—Mingi passed out soundly on his bed—there’s a small and cozy bathroom attached to it. All light gray and dark green colors, it reminds Hongjoong of the moonlight peeking through dark canopies. He glances at his wrecked reflection in the mirror and wonders, _Am I losing my mind?_

The hot shower helps. Usually he would _never_ shower with hot water on a summer’s night, but the events of the night make his skin itch and crawl, and his mind so numb that he needs to _feel something_ , the scolding hot water from above does help some. He feels alive once he steps out of the shower, his skin pink and sensitive.

He dressed in a free pair of boxers shorts and an old t-shirt. The towel he’s using to dry his hair smells so strongly of Yeosang it’s confusing him, and it’s wavering his anger. It’s probably just the scented soap they use to clean their laundry with, but Hongjoong has associated it with Yeosang. It makes his inside burn and melt, his heart flutter. With a grumble he wraps it around his neck.

He opens the window of the bathroom to get rid of the steam, and is assaulted by the loud sound of the cicadas. The forest has come alive once again, the magic flowing through it. The moon is so bright, the green forest underneath it looks a dark turquoise. It’s breathtaking. From the window he sees its vastness, secrets upon secrets hiding beneath the canopies.

About half an hour later they meet in the living room again, both changed into looser clothings: Yeosang is dressed in an old t-shirt as well, and sweatpants. His eyes momentarily catch on Hongjoong’s naked legs.

When his eyes snap back up at Hongjoong’s, he asks casually, gesturing at the TV, “Do you want to watch something?”

Hongjoong presses his lips together, standing rigidly by the couch. He drops the towel he wrapped around his neck on the couch’s armrest, and crosses his arms in front of his chest.

“No,” he says with a clipped tone. “No, I don’t.”

“What has gotten you so tense?” Yeosang asks, tilting his head confusedly. Water droplets slide down the side of his neck, catching in the hem of his thin t-shirt. That is precisely why Hongjoong brought the towel, to avoid _that_.

His eyes keep wanting to follow the droplets, wanting to see them dip over Yeosang’s collarbone, down his chest… He wants to see them dip over the dark ink of his tattoos.

He lets out a stuttering breath, but masks it as anger, not something else.

“What has gotten me so tense?!” Hongjoong repeats, incredulous. “Maybe the fact that this night was a disaster? I mean, you almost got killed, San got injured, the gray wolf escaped… Do I have to carry on?”

Yeosang flinches, but says, “Keyword: _almost_. And what about you? You got yourself nearly killed too!”

“Fuck you, I was worried! I was trying to protect you!” Hongjoong cries in frustration. “And you… You just disappeared!”

“Seonghwa and Wooyoung were literally there to aid me! It was three against one!” Yeosang returns. “I was _fine_!”

“What about the time you disappeared _three years ago_?!” Hongjoong brings back. His cheeks and jaw hurt from the tension and the way he’s clenching his teeth.

Yeosang stills.

“Is that what this is really about? Why can’t you let it go?”

“You _left_! Without a word, or trace. I just—I want to know _why_ ,” Hongjoong says, his anger is flickering brightly on his skin as it slashes open wounds to break out. “You can’t just come back and pretend nothing ever happened!”

“You have _no right_ demanding answer from me, but give me none in return!” Yeosang cracks. “You have to realize how unfair that is.”

“What questions do you have for me?”

Yeosang glares at him.

“I don’t have any questions,” he tells him, biting the inside of his cheek. “But you never really made it clear if we were friends or classmates or–or…” He falters, his eyes softening with sadness. “You don’t leave room for questions because you already establish everything, without taking into consideration how someone else might feel about it.” Hongjoong doesn’t say anything, his pride hurt. “Do you know how much it sucked to hear from Mingi that you considered me an annoyance? I thought we were friends. You made me believe we were friends.”

“I didn’t make you believe anything,” Hongjoong hisses, feeling like an exposed nerve. The look Yeosang gives him speaks a thousand words, it’s expecting yet vulnerable. It makes Hongjoong look deep inside himself, and see he can’t have control over everything or predict other people’s reactions and feelings. “Shut up,” he says, challenging Yeosang’s demanding expression.

Yeosang makes a sound, deep and frustrated, but his eyes are sharp and completely focused on Hongjoong, as if there’s nothing else in the world.

Angrily, he dares, “Make me, then.”

Something snaps in the otherwise empty house, and the tension collapses around them. Large pillars, that had held their ground for so long, now falling and crumbling to dust. With his heart high in his throat, need sparking at his fingertips, Hongjoong moves forward at the same time as Yeosang does. They meet halfway, in the middle of the living room.

Hungrily, Hongjoong latches his lips onto Yeosang’s. In his mind, he repeats one word: _finally, finally, finally_.

Yeosang presses against him fervently, his hands falling onto Hongjoong hips easily, the trail they leave is hot as pure fire.

It’s a luxury to be kissing those perfectly shaped and red, gentle and elegant lips that have been taunting him ever since Yeosang came back. When he returned after almost three years, looking so different from his younger self: with his subtly defined and lithe body and tattoos roaming his body, with the wavy golden hair that Hongjoong’s been dreaming about running his hands through…

Hongjoong doesn’t care that he’s being desperate and curious. He doesn’t waste any more time and pushes Yeosang down onto the couch, straddling his lap. He’s been waiting since before Yeosang came back into his life to kiss him, to finally know what that mouth tastes like.

He ignored it for so long, rewriting that yearning into frustration, that frustration into annoyance.

Even though he can’t get past that insufferable and irritating side of Yeosang that is so unpredictable to him; it is, at the same time, the exact reason why he’s so desperately kissing him this instant.

To be challenged, stimulated in this way—that moves Hongjoong to self-reflection—is the hottest form of fighting, in his opinion. He can’t get enough of Yeosang’s unpredictability.

Driven by that desire and need, his hands tuck Yeosang’s shirt out of his sweatpants and over his head. His blonde waves stick up, messily falling back down.

Hongjoong’s heart clenches at the sight, that heavenly face below him looking up at him with dark eyes, the same reverence in them as when Yeosang looks at the moon; it’s a beautiful play of that kaleidoscope. His cheeks are tinged pink, and his lips are impossibly red, parted as he exhales raggedly.

“ _God_ ,” he mutters. Hongjoong’s never been a worshipper, but this, right here, is a reason for devotion: the way his blood courses through his veins chased by his longing to hold Yeosang close, to hear their pious murmurs reach ecstasy, to let their skin melt together until they’ve become each other’s flesh, and bones, and sinews. To know each other, inside out.

Hongjoong admires his chest, rising and falling, and his abs. They’re not crazily defined, but under his fingers it’s a pleasant mix of hard and soft angles alike. When Hongjoong passes his fingers over Yeosang’s chest, chasing his heartbeat, Yeosang lets out a gasp, his chest following Hongjoong’s fingers.

“ _Hongjoong_ ,” Yeosang murmurs; not as if it’s a name, but as if it’s an absolute truth. He fumbles with the hem of Hongjoong’s shirt, urging him to take it off; easily, Hongjoong follows his demand.

Yeosang’s sweatpants are of thin fabric, and he feels beneath him the tightness of Yeosang’s thighs as he spreads them out to fit Hongjoong perfectly on his lap, their crotches colliding. It shoots a bolt of pleasure up Hongjoong’s spine, inducing vertebra after vertebra with magnifying electricity, until he arches hopelessly into Yeosang, a moan falling from his lips.

His whole body explodes into flames within seconds—the time it takes a bird to flap its wing to ascend high into the sky—and sensitivity becomes the dominant language that writes on his skin. 

“ _More_ ,” whispers—begs—Yeosang, hands sneaking beneath Hongjoong’s boxers as he pushes him closer.

Hongjoong has always had a thing for people touching his ass and thighs. There’s something so surrendering about hands and fingers on that hidden skin, exposing it to hot traces left by fingertips, and the neediness of just the right pressure.

A breath stutters out of his lungs, his dick hardening as he lets Yeosang push him down for that delicious friction. Before they get lost in the rotations, the push and pull, and their heated kisses, Hongjoong separates.

It’s awkward for a moment while he takes off his boxers, discarding them mindlessly on the living room floor. Yeosang watches him with hungry eyes and the awkwardness vanishes. Wearing nothing, Hongjoong climbs on Yeosang’s lap again.

Briefly, he thinks he should feel more ashamed about sitting naked on Yeosang, but he finds he doesn’t mind it. In fact, there’s something incredibly hot about it, that he’s so nude and Yeosang isn’t. He’s always had a thing for the almost, not quite intimacy.

Yeosang runs his hands up and down Hongjoong’s thighs, staring up at him with awe and dark eyes; his lips are redder than ever before and so, so inviting.

Hongjoong shudders with the need and intensity of it all. He can feel the shape of Yeosang’s dick pressing against his own, hard and hot, and it makes his pulse fly.

He keeps pushing forward, his hands resting on the couch’s headrest, Yeosang’s head right in the center. Yeosang is looking up at him, his pupils blown wide, making his eyes as dark as the night, a circle of golden fire around the blackness; his lips are swollen, begging to be kissed more.

Hongjoong leans forward, stopping millimeters from his mouth, and lets his forehead rest against Yeosang’s, closing his eyes. Slow, but surely, Hongjoong is falling. It reminds him of diving, when he submerges himself into the sea, his eyes closed, and splits the water with his hands. His whole body is floating and existing in a way that it can’t when he’s on land, he feels the currents and his own movement on his skin, little bubbles that tickle his skin. In those moments he’s just a body floating.

The curtains flutter with a soft summer breeze entering the house, it carries a sweet scent as it hushes over Hongjoong’s skin, making him shiver as his skin is feverish hot from Yeosang’s hands exploring it.

Stars bursting in the darkness behind his eyelids, Hongjoong murmurs Yeosang’s name in exhale, his knees tightening around Yeosang’s waist as he moves his hips faster, with more urgency.

He’s so close to becoming just a bundle of sensations and nerves, only skin and muscles and fast blood rushing through his veins; he’s forgotten his own name, his thoughts and his ambitions. All he’s become are the places of connection between himself and Yeosang, writing a symphony of pleasure.

Still with his eyes closed, he angles his face down, and finds Yeosang’s mouth, and kisses it.

He’s just a body floating.

Yeosang’s hands keep exploring his body: from his thighs, over his ass, up his back, down his triceps and biceps, over his chest, down his abs… With each place they explore the fire in Hongjoong’s abdomen grows, white lights dancing behind his closed eyes, until Yeosang’s left hand reaches the place Hongjoong has been so desperately waiting to be touched.

He chokes out a moan—a name, or a curse, or a blasphemy—and swallows thickly, staring at Yeosang through his eyelashes. He wants to see his face. Yeosang is concentrated, his fingers loosely wrapped around Hongjoong’s dick, moving slowly, which is the most delicious torture Hongjoong’s been put through. He wants more of it, his hips moving to a rhythm that he doesn’t quite catch.

He’s so beyond control it should scare him, but all it does is make him surrender more to Yeosang’s fingers around his dick.

Hongjoong has a moment of clarity when Yeosang lets out a low moan himself, he blinks himself out of his bliss and hastily moves his own left hand down, to push down Yeosang’s sweatpants.

Yeosang looks at him, his eyes are so, so dark, and his lips are redder than blood. His cheeks flushed and his hair a heavenly mess. He’s undone, as undone as Hongjoong feels; and there’s nothing more greater, he thinks, than this. On a wordless, silent, mutual agreement Yeosang settles his hands on Hongjoong’s ass, urging him closer, and Hongjoong wraps both their dicks in his left hand.

With a ragged breath, he finds Yeosang’s mouth again, swallowing the first of his moans when Hongjoong begins to move his hips, their dicks sliding together.

It’s nothing new, it’s not a revolution or revelation, but it’s Yeosang, and no one manages to make Hongjoong’s skin feel as alive as Yeosang does; to make him feel as comfortable and foreign in his own skin as Yeosang does. And right now, he is both. He is within the boundaries of his own skin, feeling Yeosang’s hands on him, Yeosang’s lips trailing down his neck, Yeosang’s dick against his own; and the same time he’s so out of his own skin, a stranger experiencing pleasure for the first time because it has never felt like this.

Hongjoong has never seen the stars this close, exploding behind his eyelids, the darkest place he knows.

“You’re so good,” Yeosang murmurs with a voice so undone and rough Hongjoong can only moan in response, twitching and shivering as his body floats and floats, reaching a place even higher than heaven.

It doesn’t take long for Hongjoong to come then, it all pushes him forward, and with a choked sound he comes over his fingers, Yeosang not that far behind with Hongjoong’s name dying on his lip, only a broken exhale leaving his lips.

Hongjoong stays seated for a moment, his hand still wrapped around them both, stickiness between his fingers like cobwebs. His lips are still connected with Yeosang’s, their exhilarating and heavy breaths melting into one.

When Hongjoong comes down from the high it’s the same as when his head comes up from the water, the world crashing back with stark contrast. Now that Hongjoong isn’t so intent and focused on the cacophonous symphony of his and Yeosang’s pleasure, and his skin isn’t just skin anymore—he’s himself, his name—he hears the loud cicadas and the usual nighttime concert outside in the woods.

He also is very aware of Yeosang right in front of him; aware in a way that’s different to before. The familiar tiredness of pleasure is begging him to sleep and not think, but Hongjoong can’t do that. He looks at Yeosang, who stares back, his eyes just as wide, his hands are still on Hongjoong’s thighs. They don’t feel like fire anymore, they’re just hands— _Yeosang’s_ _hands_ , his mind supplements—on his skin.

For a second his throat constricts as the realization dawns on him. That he just hooked up with Yeosang. ( _Yeosang_!)

“Do you want something to eat?” Yeosang asks, sounding almost nonchalant. His fingers twitch once before he removes them, and Hongjoong climbs off his lap, searching for his shirt and boxers. Yeosang quickly hands him the previously discarded towel, Hongjoong wipes his hands on it before letting it drop on the floor again, wrinkling his nose.

Hongjoong accidentally puts on Yeosang’s shirt at first, quick to remove it.

“Don’t worry. It looks good on you,” Yeosang tells him, wearing Hongjoong’s old shirt instead. There’s something here, Hongjoong thinks, something he should stop or address. A code that’s broken, a rule that’s bend, but he can’t quite bring himself to address it. Yeosang isn’t making a big deal of it, maybe Hongjoong shouldn’t either.

“What do you have to eat?” Hongjoong asks, following Yeosang into the kitchen.

The soft light above the stove is on, it bathes Yeosang in warmth. Hongjoong’s heart hurts at the sight; it’s so simple and homely, but he finds this Yeosang, with the messy hair, wearing Hongjoong’s shirt, completely unveiled, to be his favorite version.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> decided to split the last chapter in half since it was getting too long haha hope everyone has been well ^^


	5. v.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeosang swallows, his eyes cast downward. From his long eyelashes hang droplets of rain. He’s so painfully beautiful, it makes Hongjoong’s heart flutter with nostalgia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to post this on New Year's Eve, but it took me a little longer to finish it hah But I hope you all had a good transition into the new year, and I wish you all lots of love!!! 💛💛💛

_“Child of the wolves, you know the price, don’t you?” the woman says, smiling wistfully. “I had hoped my children would no longer suffer, but the times don’t change at the same pace as the moon does, do they? To protect these woods, there’s a price to pay.”_

* * *

It’s purely coincidental—and accidental, _he swears!_ —that Hongjoong ends up sleeping in Yeosang’s bed. He did mean to sleep on the couch, but between the sandwiches Yeosang had made, tiredness clinging to his bones, and their late night gaming session, it just seemed wiser to sleep in Yeosang’s bed.

Waking up cuddling Yeosang does not fall into any place of that plan.

Hongjoong inhales deeply, completely freezing. Memories of the previous night crash into his mind like waves during a thunderstorm, white foam sizzling on the rocks as the tides draw back again. He shivers remembering Yeosang’s hands: the desperation and neediness in their movements, the peak of their encounter…

He bites his lower lip, forcing the memories out as his body is starting to wake up and react and remember, and Yeosang’s arm sprawled lazily around Hongjoong’s waist is _not_ helping, neither is his chest flushed against his back, or any body part of his touching Hongjoong’s.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks, and about fifty other impercations.

“Mornin’,” Yeosang whispers hoarsely as if he’s sensing Hongjoong is awake. “Your heartbeat is very loud.”

_Great, he is literally sensing my panic._

“What is happening?” Yeosang further inquires.

“Nothing,” hisses Hongjoong, detaching himself from Yeosang. “I’m hungry.”

“I know a way we can change that.” He grins lazily up at Hongjoong.

Is he not insecure about the meaning of the previous night? Does he not question how that will change their relationship, their futures, their lives…?

“Get working, then.”

“Bossy.” But Yeosang climbs out of bed, stretching. His spine cracks, his tattoos moving with each of his muscles. It’s entrancing; even more so as Hongjoong remembers he had run his hands over Yeosang’s skin last night. “Follow me.”

Alarm bells sound in Hongjoong’s mind, and he can feel anxiety hush over his skin like a whisper.

The casual atmosphere of the morning: Yeosang’s cheerful chatter as he prepares them coffee and a couple of sandwiches, Hongjoong’s body leaning against the kitchen counter as he holds Yeosang’s conversation with ease, the absence of the need to hold a certain conversation… It’s unlike Hongjoong’s past hook ups, well, not that this hook is anything like the past ones.

For starters, he _likes_ Yeosang—he feels a strange connection to him—so it already cancels out the usual patterns of his other hook ups. The fact that he does like Yeosang, makes him more anxious because he can’t just leave, pretend this didn’t happen; he doesn’t want to pretend it didn’t happen. But it being Yeosang, confuses him so endlessly. He can’t predict how Yeosang will come to him about this.

Does he regret it, is he avoiding it, is this a normal occurrence to him…?

Hongjoong feels like he’ll go crazy any second now.

But he can’t deny he kind of appreciates the casualness in which Yeosang is moving around, giving Hongjoong freedom to figure it out, freedom to forget if he wants to.

“Then, Lord Farquaad died tragically. A car ran him over,” Yeosang is saying, generously smearing mayonnaise on a toast.

This drags Hongjoong out of his tumble of thoughts. He nearly chokes on his coffee. “I’m sorry, what?”

Yeosang looks over his shoulder, eyebrows raised. “Yeah, Lord Farquaad, our chicken. My uncle has a little farm, when I moved there three years ago, he just got a few new chickens and I was allowed to name one of them.”

“You named your chicken Lord Farquaad?” Hongjoong is rethinking his previous statement about liking Yeosang.

“Yeah?” He tilts his head, as if to say, ‘what’s wrong with that?’ And Hongjoong wants to tell him, ‘A lot. A lot is wrong with that.’ He doesn’t, but he silently judges Yeosang. “I’m going to assume you’ve never watched _Shrek_.”

“You would be correct in that assumption. All I know about the movie comes from Mingi.”

Yeosang grins. “Good to know. He’ll become my new best friend. Wooyoung and San are way too boring.”

Hongjoong briefly imagines Mingi and Yeosang as best friends, both of them out to make Hongjoong’s life a living hell. They both carry the ‘little shit’ gene. He shakes his head, dissipating the image.

“We should watch it together,” Yeosang continues. “Are you free right now?”

“Uh…” Hongjoong isn’t sure what to say. It’s not that he has plans right away, but he doesn’t know what will await him if he accepts the invitation. He isn’t even into _Shrek_. Yeosang is smiling, holding a wooden tray with their sandwiches on it. Dumbly, Hongjoong nods and says, “Yeah, sure.”

In the end, they don’t exactly end up watching _Shrek_. Yeosang talks a lot during the movie; it reminds Hongjoong of that time they played Mario Kart, years ago, and Yeosang spent the whole time making up little stories about the characters and crafting jokes he laughed about like they were the funniest in the world.

Hongjoong has to admit he likes this Yeosang: carefree and comfortable, with laughter permanently edged into his face—that mirth in his eyes that doesn’t quite leave, the slight tilt of his lips. And he can’t help himself when he sees this Yeosang, that he compares it to that boy he once knew, that boy of blue who hid secrets and pretended he was okay. There’s a similarity between them, that animated way of explaining things and telling stories, full of wild gestures and enigmatic voices, but Hongjoong can see that now it’s genuine compared to they way Yeosang used to be at thirteen, at seventeen.

Whatever had troubled him so much back then, he overcame it.

Hongjoong feels a bit like he’s drowning now, but he needs to _know_. He needs to know so desperately. He doesn’t want another fight to break out between them—though, after last night’s encounter, he can’t say he is _entirely against_ it either. To have that tension burst again, sizzling anger that morphs into passion, both surrendering to it because deep down they yearn for more. It’s a form of art to turn anger into passion, one, it seems, they both mastered with one another.

He shakes his head, losing trail of what matters. Awkwardly, he clears his throat and asks, “Three years ago, did you leave because of the hunters?”

Yeosang looks up surprised.

“Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have—This is bad timing.”

“No, it’s fine,” Yeosang assures him. “I was just caught off guard by the sudden question.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Hongjoong glances at Shrek and Donkey on screen, and wonders what the _fuck_ this entire set up is. “You don’t have to answer. I mean,” he sighs, complicated, “I would really like to know the truth. I want to know you, Yeosang, but I understand if you don’t want to talk about it. I really do.”

Yeosang licks his lips, eyes dark. His gaze momentarily flickers over Hongjoong’s naked legs, but when his eyes meet Hongjoong’s and he sees the seriousness in them, he straightens his back.

“It’s fine. I should talk about it. I avoided it for so long in the hopes it makes it less real, but…” He shrugs, then scratches the back of his neck. He finds a comfortable position on the couch before he continues, “My dad’s death was just the beginning. The hunters found us, so we fled. My mom was terrified something would happen to me. Seonghwa’s dad offered us a protected place. He’s a powerful wolf. We stayed there in his safety and hoped the whole ordeal would blow over, but my dad’s death was a warning.”

“Your dad…” Hongjoong swallows. “He was killed by the hunters…”

Yeosang nods. “They don’t know we’re peaceful—protectors. They wanted us gone. Now that we are back, they are again hunting us again.”

“I’m sorry.” Hongjoong feels terrible. “I’m so sorry.”

Yeosang shakes his head. “It’s not our fault, it never was your fault. You were…” He hesitates, his eyes wide as he studies Hongjoong. “You were the better part of those years, Hongjoong.”

“ _Oh_.”

Oh, he feels so foolish now.

Yeosang starts again. “Did you know, the identity of the two dismembered corpses, are of hunters? Specifically, hunters that killed my dad?”

Hongjoong’s skin turns icy cold, suddenly the morning feels like January, not July.

“No, I didn’t,” he responds, carefully asking, “Do you think they deserved it—dying?”

Yeosang is quiet for a very long time.

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t that spin you in an endless circle of revenge? It will never end.” From the looks of it, Yeosang knows this. “Shouldn’t you try to break out of this cycle?”

No reply comes after that.

It takes four days before San is discharged from the hospital, and when he does, it’s Mingi who picks him up, hiding a bouquet of flowers under his jacket, his hair styled meticulously—Hongjoong is sure he can even see traces of eyeliner.

He watches the whole ordeal from his car with confused eyes.

“Since when…?” he mutters, more to himself to process, but Wooyoung overhears him, a cat-like smile spreading over his face— _cat-like_ , Hongjoong ponders vaguely, _is that strange to say since he’s a wolf?_

“They bonded in the hospital,” Wooyoung tells him, picking at his purple nail polish.

“I see.” They wait in silence for Mingi and San, the moon is pale white in the clear blue sky. Its influence is still strong over the wolves and forest. Hongjoong tilts his head, eyes falling on the rearview mirror: Wooyoung is sprawled out lazily in the backseat, his face a mask. Hongjoong has learned that, despite Wooyoung’s explosive and cheerful personality, he is rather quiet and mysterious. He has a feeling the wolf knows more than he gives away. “So…”

Wooyoung looks up, his dark brown eyes meeting Hongjoong’s through the mirror. He arches one of his perfect eyebrows quizzically.

“Yes?”

“What happened in the woods four nights ago… The hunters and the rogue werewolf, any leads?”

Wooyoung shakes his head. “No. The hunters have kept their distance… I don’t know what their deal is. They killed Yeosang’s father seven years ago, making his family feel unsafe in these valleys. Since then, they’ve poisoned them,” he explains, a small frown between his brows. “They never bothered San and I, which _bothers_ _me_. All these years, they have not hunted us—what makes Yeosang and Seonghwa so special?”

“Do you think it has to do with them?” Hongjoong wonders.

“Their family, yes.” Wooyoung studies Hongjoong briefly. “I don’t know how much Yeosang has told you, but he comes from an ancient family of wolves. They are powerful.”

Hongjoong bites the inside of his cheek. “He hasn’t said much,” he admits, frustration and doubt clinging to his skin like his shirt. If Yeosang keeps hiding secrets from him, how real is their acquaintanceship really? He wants to know Yeosang, be known in return, but he can’t allow himself that if Yeosang doesn’t cooperate. Hongjoong is not going to be the first that opens up.

“What about the rogue wolf?” Hongjoong asks quickly, deviating the attention from Yeosang and his own self-sabotaging thoughts.

“What about them?”

“Any idea who it is? What they want?”

Wooyoung looks out of the window, at the hospital. His face turns dark for a moment, a shadow passing over it. When he meets Hongjoong’s eyes again, it’s gone, but he’s _seen_ it. Wooyoung knows something, and Hongjoong knows there’s more to this all—information that has been kept from him.

“I’m not sure,” Wooyoung says vaguely. “I don’t even know if it’s a real wolf or not.”

Hongjoong stills. “What,” he deadpans.

Wooyoung shakes his head, suddenly breaking his idle posture to exit the car abruptly. “Never mind, forget I said that.”

Hongjoong parts his lips in surprise, wanting to follow Wooyoung into the afternoon, but he’s stopped when he sees Mingi and San finally exit the hospital. San looks relatively well, not as pale as he had after the attack. There’s a cast around his arm, one that he won’t need for much longer since werewolves heal quicker than regular humans. Mingi is helping him walk, one arm around San’s waist while the werewolf is holding the flowers.

Wooyoung is long gone.

“Uh,” Hongjoong mutters, momentarily struck. The flowers are a lot—like _a lot_. It looks like Mingi bought the entire flower shop.

“Can you, like, open the door for him?” Mingi asks pointedly.

“Yeah!” Hongjoong springs out of the seat, opening the car’s door so that San can climb inside. Colorful petals fall everywhere as it’s unavoidable for him to bump bouquet everywhere.

Over the hood of the car, Mingi and Hongjoong exchange a loud glance.

“Shut up, Hong,” Mingi hisses before he opens the passenger door. “You’re way worse.”

“How am _I_ worse—?”

“Your tension with Yeosang… _Gross_. You can’t keep eyes nor hands off each other.”

Hongjoong presses his lips together; he can’t argue with that. It’s true that since _that_ _night_ , when Hongjoong and Yeosang hooked up, it’s been the most difficult task to not look at Yeosang. Especially when Yeosang so very obviously does everything in an attempt to get Hongjoong’s attention.

“Shut up,” he mutters weakly, entering the car. He glances at San over his shoulder. “All strapped in?”

“Sure am,” San responds, flowers all around him, seatbelt around his torso, backpack by his feet. The bouquet is on the other seat.

Hongjoong looks at Mingi then, whose smile is a bit shaky, his eyes wide. Hongjoong grins smugly.

“Off we go!” he exclaims, turning on the engine, and pop music blasts from the radio. “Where to? Yeosang’s first or your flat?”

“Um, home first, then we can go to Yeosang’s,” San says. He eyes the car nervously. “Wasn’t Wooyoung supposed to pick me up too?”

“He… left. I’m not sure why,” Hongjoong says, thinking back to Wooyoung’s odd wording. _I don’t even know if it’s a real wolf or not._ He remembers Yeosang’s frustrations regarding the wolf: the difficulty to get ahold of their scent, and that it he thinks the wolf is invisible.

San hums, frowning. “I guess we’ll see him at Yeosang’s.” He then mutters directions to Hongjoong as best as he can as the afternoon darkens.

San and Wooyoung live practically at the other side of the small town as Yeosang and Seonghwa, far away from the woods and the valley. An industrial area spreading out with many trucks parked at a desolate gas station, smoke rising from fabrics… It’s a painful contrast to those evergreen and abundant woods. In a way, Hongjoong ponders, this is a forest of metallic trees, vacant of leaves, and rusty formations. Smoke hanging everywhere like mist does between the forests, over the valley.

Hongjoong stays in the car as Mingi helps San up his flat. The radio is still on, playing softly in the background, from outside comes the occasional sound of a car passing by, but the neighborhood is very quiet aside from the distant clanking of metal.

Through the rearview mirror, Hongjoong can see waning moon hanging over where the valley is. He shivers thinking of its power, of his dreams, of the mystery it hides under its light… He thinks about Yeosang, who is a mystery himself. One Hongjoong wants to solve so desperately.

For a brief moment, he considers throwing away his ego, his limitations, rid himself of everything in a crazy attempt to understand Yeosang, to leave all precautions behind and skip forward to the last step. Then he remembers precautions exist for a reason, that it’s not for nothing that he has his boundaries set up… 

About half an hour later, Mingi and San are back, and they set off toward the hill and the woods.

When they arrive at Yeosang’s, there is a little celebration set up for San’s recovery: Seonghwa has cooked up several small dishes and a very delicious looking dessert that Mingi is ogling. There’s a six back of beers, and a set of movies lying on the living room ground in front of the TV.

“Glad to have you back in one piece,” says Seonghwa, hugging San and messing up his hair, to which San just scowls, but he returns the hug. “I made your favorites!”

“Thank you,” San says with a shy smile.

“Where’s Wooyoung?” Yeosang asks, frowning.

“Uh, I thought he would be here,” Hongjoong says. “He left earlier.”

“Why?”

Hongjoong shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“He’ll appear,” Seonghwa reassures them. “He can be a little like the wind, coming and going at his own will.”

“I just hope he doesn’t get up to anything stupid,” Yeosang says, worriedly glancing out of the living room window into the forest. “He can be a bit reckless.”

“That would explain why you’re friends,” Hongjoong mutters under his breath.

Yeosang’s eyebrows fly up at that. He gives Hongjoong some kind of look that is supposed to be meaningful, but Hongjoong can’t really decipher it—is it accusatory, is it perplexed, is it annoyed?

“Come on, let’s eat before the food turns cold,” Seonghwa urges them.

Hongjoong is momentarily struck by it all, not even a week ago he was running in the forest with a bunch of werewolves underneath the ever watching presence of the moon, chasing down a rogue werewolf, and escaping barely escaping death; and now they were sprawled out on the couch, holding a movie marathon.

Yeosang is sitting right next to him, their knees are touching, and he can’t stop but think that nights ago they hooked up on that very couch—naturally, Yeosang and him washed the sheets, it’d be inhumane not to—and he doesn’t really know what to do.

He wants to lean against Yeosang, or place is hand on his thigh and tap the beat to the movies’ soundtrack. He isn’t sure how Yeosang would react if he would _just do it_ ; are they there? Is that something they can do?

_Why not?_

Tentatively, Hongjoong shifts his position, inching closer to Yeosang, until their shoulders are touching. Yeosang looks up, smiling, but he doesn’t say or do anything to further this contact; neither does he push Hongjoong away.

From the periphery of his eyes, Hongjoong can see San and Mingi sitting much in a similar position, bodies pressed together, but unlike Hongjoong, Mingi has his arm, very awkwardly, slung around San’s shoulders, playing with a loose thread of San’s plaid button up.

Can’t Yeosang just sling an arm around Hongjoong’s shoulders?

“ _Ugh_ ,” he mutters quietly to himself.

“What is it?” Yeosang whispers, his eyes on him, as he turned head.

They’re very close. Hongjoong can see the different specks of color in Yeosang’s eyes, and he can smell the forest on his skin, and that familiar shampoo in his hair. It brings the memories from that night back with such a force it should be embarrassing, his skin immediately on fire.

He swallows, and looks away.

“Nothing, just hate the characters, they’re so stupid,” he mumbles.

Yeosang laughs. Hongjoong can feel his laughter against him, where their shoulders and knees are touching, and he wonders what it would be like to feel that laughter while they’re kissing, sitting on his lap.

“Yeah, they are,” Yeosang agrees easily and moves away again.

They return to watch the movie silently, but Hongjoong wishes for so much more.

Ready to leave, the guests are accompanied to the front door, which Seonghwa opens rather energetically until his eyes fall on the wooden planks. His breath stays in his lungs, coming out brusquely.

The other werewolves are now at the door too. Wooyoung gasps.

“What is it?” Mingi wonders, confused.

The dried leaves of wolfsbane lie threateningly on the front porch, all of them momentarily stunned into silence.

Hongjoong can feel his quick heartbeat, sweat pooling in his lower back. He supposes it holds great meaning; why else would the hunters have left it there? But he doesn’t know its symbolism. Going by the werewolves’ sinister looks, it can’t be good.

Finally, Seonghwa picks up the stem, one leaf falls of. He studies it carefully.

“Well,” he starts, “this is just unfortunate.”

“What does it mean?” Mingi wonders. “Isn’t it, like, poisonous for you?” He glances at San. “Should he even touch it?”

San smiles briefly. “It’s not poisonous when its dried. Once you rip the plant off, it keeps its effects only for about two days. This one is a couple of days old. Seonghwa is fine.”

“But there’s more, isn’t there?”

“Yeah.” San glances at Wooyoung and Yeosang. “It means they’re officially hunting us. They want revenge. This is just a mere warning—or threat if you will. They _will_ kill us.”

Hongjoong swallows thickly.

He glances at Yeosang, suddenly very scared of the possibility of losing him. He just got him back, got used to his insufferable—and so, so loving and endearing—self, he can’t lose him again. He can’t even picture it. He’s lost him once, he doesn’t want to lose him again. He refuses to. The only way he wants to imagine Yeosang is alive; alive and with his golden waves and dark, golden eyes, and that grin of his, talking for hours upon hours about anything that crosses his mind.

His heart hurts a little, and he looks away again.

Seonghwa runs a hand through his hair in distress. “We should meet soon and discuss how to proceed, we can’t ignore this.” He looks at Mingi and Hongjoong. “I think we all would understand it, if you two decide this is too much for you—“

“No,” Hongjoong says decidedly. He can feel Yeosang’s gaze on him. “We will help you in whichever way we can; right, Mingi?”

“Oh, definitely!” Mingi gives them a dopey, hopeful smile. “You’re stuck with us now!”

It’s the same smile he has when he drags Hongjoong out of his flat for some nonsensical adventure of his, that Hongjoong hates him for at first, but then, once he’s lying in his bed late at night, is very glad for. His life would be so incredibly dull without Mingi in it.

Under his breath, San mutters, “I wouldn’t mind that at all.” Then adds, for everyone to hear, “Thank you for picking me up from the hospital.”

“Oh, it was no problem,” Mingi tells him, his dopey smile turning into a strange, flirty grimace. “Would do it any time for you.”

Hongjoong looks away, resisting the urge to kick Mingi, or fling himself into the sun. How can he just so openly flirt with San—in front of everyone else? Hongjoong would have a thousand little heart attacks if he so much as tried to attempt that. He shudders inwardly at the idea. He’s a bit glad now, that Yeosang hasn’t said anything, or isn’t trying to openly flirt with him like this.

“Has Wooyoung said something?” Hongjoong asks to distract from Mingi’s flirting.

Yeosang shakes his head.

“No,” Seonghwa says. He looks a but worried now. “But I have faith he will soon be back.”

“Did he really not say anything to you?” San asks, head tilted.

“We did talk about the rogue werewolf,” Hongjoong admits, biting the inside of his cheek. “He said some weird stuff.”

“What stuff?” Yeosang inquires, suddenly stiff.

“That he doesn’t believe this rogue werewolf is even real.”

The words seem to be heavier, more meaningful than he realizes. San looks at Seonghwa, who looks at Yeosang, who’s staring into the woods with a pensive expression.

“He said that?”

Hongjoong nods. “I didn’t think it was of that much importance,” he says. “After all, we did see it. It _literally_ jumped on me and destroyed my clothes.”

Yeosang hums.

“We’ll talk more about it soon,” Seonghwa suddenly interrupts them. “You said you guys had work to go to.”

“ _Shit_!” Mingi exclaims, slapping his forehead. “I was meant to close the pet store! God, I’ll be fired! I can’t afford to be fired!” He groans in despair.

San holds a little smile on his face, eyebrows scrunched in perplexed affection.

Hongjoong gently grabs Mingi’s wrist and drags him over to his deplorable car. Jongho said it would have some months to live, but every time he drives it, his anxiety flares up at all the strange noises it does and at the different needles pointing toward things he doesn’t understand and, at this point, is too scared to do so.

“Call us when something happens,” he calls over his shoulder. “When you need us.”

“Will do,” Yeosang says.

“It’s a summer downpour!” Yunho exclaims overly excited from his bedroom, it’s followed by a loud crash, a _thump_ , and hurried footsteps. “Hong! Hongjoong! It’s raining!”

He storms into the living room, where Hongjoong is just trying to peacefully surf the internet in search for a better summer job than the one he has.

He eyes his flatmate in exasperation and says, “Yep.”

“Come on, you promised!” Yunho says, pulling at Hongjoong’s arm. “Please!”

Hongjoong closes the lid of his laptop, sighing heavily. Yunho is a rain fanatic, especially of those soft, sweet scented, and life-changing summer downpours. Yunho loves to walk through them without a care in the world, let the rain drench him, his wet hair plastered on his forehead, laughing freely as he drinks a cola or a beer. In the past years, he’s often persuaded Hongjoong to join him on those absurd adventures.

“Fine, let me get a jacket,” he says, heading to his room to grab one of his thin summer jackets.

Yunho waits for him, brimming with excitement. He’s dressed in a button up and some lazy shorts. He’s chanting under his breath, “Come on, come on, come on.”

Hongjoong huffs out an annoyed yet fond laugh. “I’m coming, _jeez_.”

They step out into the rain minutes later, the night is warm and quiet as it’s already very late, most people at home having dinner or watching a movie to unwind from a long, hot day. Only Yunho’s crazy enough to go out right now—and Hongjoong is crazy enough to follow him.

The downpour feels soft on his skin, but persistent too. It’s not a curtain soft drizzle, it’s a scattered spectacle of thick drops that fall with a loud _splash_ , causing another, small downpour upon meeting his skin. It’s nice, it makes him feel alive.

The continuous shush of the rain is quite lulling, freeing Hongjoong’s mind momentarily of the craziness he’s been spun into a month ago.

“So,” Yunho begins, “you’ve been hanging out an awful amount of time with Yeosang lately.”

Hongjoong presses his lips together, sucking on them. “Yes? What about it?”

Yunho tilts his head, his hair already drenched, water droplets flying everywhere, back into the downpour they came from. Hongjoong knows what’s coming next; Yunho knows him too well.

“I’m hearing your defensive tone, which means you’re trying to hide that there’s something going on.”

“Sorry, you’ll have to speak to my lawyer.”

Yunho laughs. “It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it, but I thought it could be freeing.”

Hongjoong sighs. He knows Yunho is right, of course, but it’s so hard to just— _talk_. Especially because this makes him very vulnerable and human that he likes Yeosang, that he wants something out of—well, whatever that night was. He’s never been one to talk about these kind of things. He just lets them rot once they’re over, knowing that with time he forgets and grows.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Yunho says.

“No, it’s fine,” Hongjoong promises him. “We slept together a few days ago. It was very nice.” Yunho hums, there’s a small smile. “Like, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced something like that. I—“ He hesitates, fighting the blush creeping up on his cheeks. “I’m not sure what’s next.”

“What do you mean, you’re not sure what’s next?”

“We haven’t spoken about it, but it’s not really that awkward between us either. I don’t know how to casually bring it up.”

“Hongjoong, you don’t have to treat it casually if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to scare him away. I can be a bit possessive and intense. I don’t want him to be repulsed by me.”

Yunho sighs, slowing down in the downpour. He looks at Hongjoong, and says kindly, “Yeosang doesn’t have to be like the people you dated before. I think you should tell him that you don’t want it to end in a one night stand. You have every right to tell him—to _want_ more.”

Hongjoong bites harshly on the inside of his cheek. He barely feels the rain anymore, he’s grown used to it by now. “I guess you’re right, it’s just difficult.”

“I know. I know it is, but I sincerely doubt he just slept with you like that, without a care in the world. Mingi’s been telling me that Yeosang is very fond of you.”

“He did?”

“Yes.” A beat of silence. “Are you ignoring that second part of the sentence?”

“Yes.”

“Hongjoong. Don’t let this be buried in past bad experiences.”

“I’ll… I’ll talk to him about it.”

“Don’t hold back your feelings, there’s nothing wrong with them. There’s nothing wrong with having fallen in love with him.”

 _Fallen in love;_ it echoes in Hongjoong’s mind. Has he? He isn’t quite sure about it, but what he knows is that the intensity of that night, the carefulness and preciousness of Yeosang’s hands on him, it’s all so real to Hongjoong. It’s not something he wants to let rot in those self-sabotaging ways of his, when he’s compelled to lessen his feelings.

Yunho is right, Yeosang isn’t like his past partners. Yeosang may roam in limits of freedom, where he gifts himself and others space, but he wouldn’t frown upon Hongjoong’s intensity.

They might be quite opposite in that, but to a point that it works so incredibly well together.

They’re only a block away from their flat, when suddenly a figure stumbles out from a nearby alley. Golden waves dark from the rain, splattered on his tanned skin; his golden eyes are almost gone with his large pupils. Yeosang looks a bit wrecked in that summer downpour.

The atmosphere changes immediately.

“Yeosang?” Hongjoong calls out surprised.

The werewolf looks at him, awkwardly walking over to them. “I was, uh, waiting for you.” He glances at Yunho and smiles, hesitant. “Hey, long time no see.”

“Yeah, hey, nice to see you.” Yunho exchanges a look with Hongjoong. “I’ll give you a moment.” He walks away, to the building their flat is in. He turns around once before he disappears completely.

“What brings you where?” Hongjoong asks Yeosang.

Yeosang shrugs. He’s dressed in a tank top, grease stains everywhere, and a pair of loose pants, his feet enveloped by boots, despite that it’s summer. Water droplets slide down his arms, serpentining around the black ink. Hongjoong figures he must have just finished his shift at Jongho’s mechanic shop.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Yeosang confesses; it’s small and quiet, riddled with anxiety.

Hongjoong’s still very perplexed by seeing this side of Yeosang, the one he barely shows, like he’s always trying hard to be cheerful and carefree for the sake of others, keeping his insecurities to himself so he doesn’t burden those around him. Hongjoong understands the preciousness in which he needs to handle this side of Yeosang.

“Okay,” he says. They’re still standing in the middle of the summer downpour, near the alley. “About what?”

Yeosang swallows, his eyes cast downward. From his long eyelashes hang droplets of rain. He’s so painfully beautiful, it makes Hongjoong’s heart flutter with nostalgia.

“The other night…” Yeosang looks up, meeting Hongjoong’s gaze. “I don’t want to push you, I don’t want you to make a decision if you don’t want to… I don’t want it to have to change anything between us, but I want to know; what was it for you?”

Hongjoong’s throat tightens for a moment, a wave of anxiety of his own washing over him, but the rain washes it away, down the cobblestone streets to the drains. They’ve been fearing much of the same, maybe differently in their own ways because they’re different. It eases his heart a bit, that they’re chasing and running from the same thing.

“For me, it was the first time I’ve really let myself lose control, the first time I’ve let myself feel so much,” he tells Yeosang. “I didn’t want to pressure you because I can be very intense, and demand a lot, and I don’t want that to be the reason you distance yourself from me.”

Yeosang is staring at him, a slight frown between his brows as he assimilates his words. Hongjoong feels so thrilled when he can see the emotions and understanding filter through Yeosang’s beautiful eyes, from that initial apprehension to astonishment and finally relief.

Without a word, Yeosang surges forward. He takes Hongjoong’s face in his hand and kisses him fervently. His lips are so incredibly hot in contrast to the rain. Hongjoong ends up stumbling back until his back hits the wall of the alley. He holds Yeosang’s waist, his heart tumbling over in his chest as he understands Yeosang is _kissing_ him.

He’s kissing him— _again_.

Yeosang pulls a way, a giddy chuckle on his lips that Hongjoong desires to taste, but he keeps his face at millimeters from Yeosang’s.

“I can hear your heartbeat,” the werewolf whispers, not at all smug how Hongjoong once thought it was, but in awe.

“That’s unfair.”

Yeosang takes his hand and guides it to his own heart, where Hongjoong can feel it, flying under his fingers.

“No need to find it unfair, mine is also racing,” he says with a grin.

Hongjoong doesn’t want to part but the downpour is slowly drowning them, the rain is now falling so loudly he barely can hear Yeosang talk. When thunder booms overhead, both of them flinching, they decide it’s time to part, but with a promise that they’ll see each other again soon—as it’s become unavoidable.

Their plan of preparing for the August full moon to tackle the rogue werewolf and deal with the hunters, using the weeks leading up to it as a means to get Hongjoong and Mingi more prepared for these dangers as well as dwell into the identity of the rogue werewolf, crumbles apart about ten days after July’s full moon.

Since the hunters seem very uninterested—or unaware—of Wooyoung and San’s identities as werewolves, the two of them patrol the perimeters around Yeosang and Seonghwa’s house.

They have been reuniting for training lessons: Hongjoong with his bow and arrow, Mingi to handle the stress of it all—and some first aid. The afternoon passed quickly and they find themselves soon in the kitchen, nursing a beer each to come down of all the exertion throughout the day. It’s quite a feat to work a regular job in the morning, then practice shooting with his bow for three hours. Hongjoong is more than dead by the end of his days now. But it’s pleasant, and he gets to see Yeosang.

Nothing much has changed since their kiss in the rain, but there’s an unspoken, obvious atmosphere between them consisting of gentle touches and stolen kisses—even if, by now, Hongjoong is sure their friends have caught up. Even Yunho knows, his smile smug when Hongjoong returned to their flat after his kiss with Yeosang in the rain.

“I suppose it went well,” Yunho said, rubbing his wet hair with a towel, eyes crinkling in playfulness and relief. “You two did talk?”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong breathed, his own eyes crinkle without him noticing at the memory. “Yeah, we did talk.”

Usually, he needs a verbal, distinctive affirmation or confirmation, but Yeosang is different in every aspect from the usual people in his life. He’s a bit carefree and moves in a wide space, that he gives everyone else too. He might not always use his words, but Hongjoong can now see it in his little actions and glances all that he’s still too anxious to speak about.

Hongjoong doesn’t mind it. It’s sort of refreshing. He’s got the encouragement he needed, and feels freely.

Hongjoong is leaning against the kitchen counter, Yeosang right next to him, their shoulders brushing together.

Mingi is opposite of them, watching the forest curiously. “It’s getting dark,” he says. “We should head home soon.”

“Yeah,” Hongjoong agrees, though he wishes he could stay for a little longer—with Yeosang. Now that their relationship is starting and molding he wants to spend as much time with him as possible, let it become something beautiful. But he knows invisible and unattainable threads are twisting and complicating their relationship, and so much they don’t know awaits them in the woods, under the moonlight.

“Tomorrow, same time?” Seonghwa asks them, rinsing his glass.

He looks tired. After that wolfsbane flower, he has been on edge. Nothing has happened since, as if the hunters are enjoying to torture them like this: leave a threat without any follow up.

When Hongjoong asked more about it, no sure answer came.

“They hold us accountable for the killings of their two companions, even if it wasn’t us,” Seonghwa responded him. “I have tried to meet with their leader, but no answer has come. I would like to finish this business as diplomatic as possible…”

“They’re hunters!” Wooyoung cried. “They won’t listen to us. Even less if they think we are terrible creatures!”

“You are right on that,” San agreed. “It doesn’t help the rogue werewolf is like smoke—untraceable and invisible. We have no idea who it is, what pack they belong to.”

Wooyoung made a strange noise, frustrated, and glanced at Yeosang.

“Are we sure it _is_ a werewolf?”

The question left a tangibly tense air behind. Hongjoong wondered what exactly Wooyoung was trying to communicate to his friends. Whatever it was, he’s not confident enough to speak it out loud. Hongjoong tried to get him alone to talk about it, but Wooyoung only shook his head.

“Ignore me, I might just be a lunatic.” The words sounded bitter, like there was a whole back story to them.

Hongjoong looks at Yeosang now, tilts his head, and gestures at the living room. Yeosang immediately understands him. They excuse themselves.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t!” Mingi calls after them, waggling his eyebrows.

Seonghwa scoffs. “As if!”

Yeosang exchanges an amused look with Hongjoong, but doesn’t say anything about it. _Oh, if Seonghwa only knew,_ Hongjoong muses.

“What did you want to talk about?” Yeosang inquires, stepping so close to Hongjoong he can sense the warmth his body is radiating. “Or was this just a smart way to kiss me?”

Hongjoong pushes him softly. “I actually wanted to ask you something, but if you’re this close you’ll make me forget it.”

“Tempting.” Yeosang sighs, putting distance between them. “What did you want to ask about?”

“About Wooyoung,” Hongjoong starts, then quickly adds, “About this cryptic shit he’s been saying—about the rogue wolf.”

Yeosang’s face shuts, a troubling look crossing his face. He knows something too.

“ _Yeosang_ ,” Hongjoong pleads.

The werewolf lets out another sigh, this one heavy, and he lets himself fall onto the couch ungracefully. Hongjoong sits next to him waiting patiently.

“Wooyoung is in the belief the rogue werewolf is not _actually_ a lycan. Not like we are, anyway,” he begins. He gestures with his hand vaguely at the unexplored forests outside. “These woods are very ancient and full of magic,” he tells Hongjoong. “We _are_ their protectors, but in time there’s a lot we have lost. The population of werewolves in this area grew very thin throughout the decades, and a lot of our knowledge was lost with time. I barely know anything myself. My father—he knew some. My mom is sure it’s another reason why he was murdered.”

Hongjoong frowns. “I don’t quite follow. What does this have to do with what Wooyoung has been saying?”

“There’s a lot we don’t know—even about ourselves. How far our own powers go and how much the moon essence influences us.” He bites the inside of his cheek. Hongjoong can see Yeosang himself lives in incertitude, moving through these magical woods for the first time too. They’re all in the dark. “We are very emotion driven, anger and sadness can make us turn, especially around a full moon. I thought the rogue werewolf was one like that, driven by emotions…”

“But?”

“But I have to agree with Wooyoung. The werewolf doesn’t seem very attainable, like he’s not entirely real. Not like we are.”

“What does that _mean_?” Hongjoong presses, feeling his head become dizzy.

“A manifestation, Hongjoong, or a shadow-wolf,” Yeosang finally answers, his voice small.“Whatever you want to call it.” He looks at his hands, twisted in his lap, not daring to meet Hongjoong’s inquisitive gaze.

“A manifestation?” he echoes, not yet fully understanding.

“Wooyoung believes the rogue werewolf is a manifestation of grief, revenge, or whatever else there is,” Yeosang explains further. “They are often called shadow-wolves because of their appearance, and because they’re a shadow of a real werewolf. It’s more of a legend, really, but Wooyoung believes in it.”

He looks up at Hongjoong, something akin fear flickering in his golden eyes—fear that Hongjoong will judge him.

“So the question is: whose shadow is it?” Hongjoong makes sure he’s understood. Yeosang nods curtly and looks away from him, his hands still twisted. Hongjoong’s heart sinks as he begins to understand Yeosang’s hesitation and tense shoulders. “Is it—?”

He doesn’t get to formulate his question as the front door of the house is opened forcefully, San stepping inside like a storm.

“They’re here!” he announces, breathless. “They have come: the hunters are in the forest!”

Yeosang jumps out of his seat, glancing at Hongjoong apologetically.

“We should go.”

“What does it mean that they’re here?” Mingi asks no one in particular, his voice thin.

“They want their _vendetta_ tonight. We just saw them. Wooyoung is trying to stop them,” San explains, his voice loaded with emotions. “We need to _do_ something.”

“But what? What can we do?” Seonghwa questions. “We can’t kill them.”

Yeosang remains quiet. Hongjoong thinks back to their conversation the morning after they hooked up.

_Do you think they deserved it—dying?_

_Yes._

He shivers and looks away. He’s not sure what to make of this completely unknown side of Yeosang. His question earlier, if the shadow-wolf is Yeosang’s because of his father’s death, possibly doesn’t need an answer anymore.

“First, we need to find Wooyoung,” San says. “Then, we will see.”

His words galvanize the household, everyone moving at once, and minutes later they’re venturing into the dark and uncharted woods, the waning moon brightly above them. Hongjoong never noticed it before, but no matter what phase the moon is it, it’s to terribly bright—just as it becomes dreadfully dark when it’s a new moon. He thinks of that magic Yeosang has mentioned multiple times, and the moon essence he’s heard them mention; and he thinks of his own dreams with that translucent woman.

“I’m going to try to find Wooyoung,” Yeosang says and before anyone can stop him, he transforms into a wolf and jumps over thick bushes and low branches.

Hongjoong’s heart sinks.

“Yeosang!” Seonghwa protests, but his cousin is long gone.

“God damn it,” Hongjoong curses under his breath. It’s the same as the full moon night, when Yeosang went off on his own. Hongjoong wonders if there’s more to this, that he leaves without waiting or a word. Does he not know how much he’s cared for?

San speaks up, “Maybe we _should_ split up, that way we can cover more ground.”

Seonghwa looks troubled. “I don’t know,” he mutters. “It’s reckless.”

“You know I’m never reckless.”

“I’m not worried about you San, so much as about Yeosang and Wooyoung,” he says with a look toward where Yeosang disappeared into the darkness.

“I’ll go with San,” Hongjoong offers. His fingertips are almost numb with the tight grip he has on his bow, an arrow ready to shoot at any time he needs to.

Though he’s not really sure he would actually shoot it, his options are quite limited: shoot a hunter—a _human_ —or shoot the shadow-wolf—possibly, a manifestation of Yeosang’s grief and pain. He’s not sure how that would affect Yeosang.

Seonghwa studies them, then, with a sigh, he says, “All right. Mingi you’re coming with me. We will go toward them lake.”

“There’s a lake?” Mingi echoes, perplexed. “I didn’t know”

“There’s a lot you don’t know,” Seonghwa tells him good-naturedly.

Mingi chews on his bottom lip apprehensively. San shoots him a reassuring grin, squeezing his shoulder.

Hongjoong glances around himself, trying to discern something in the darkness. They’ve been walking for a while, nearing an hour, with the typical sounds of a summer night accompanying them: singing cicadas, hooting owls, critters hushing over the grass and through the bushes… Nothing out of the usual; if anything, the night is almost perfectly beautiful and serene, but Hongjoong can feel a shift in it. There’s something _there_ that he feels deep within him.

Through the canopies of the trees, under the watchful eyes of the moon, he can make out a dark and tall shadow. It seems incredible because this forest is immense and unexplored, but miraculously Hongjoong recognizes where they are. They are near the clearing with the huge rock standing mystically.

For some reason, he feels a strong urge that he should go there.

The leaves around them rustle and Wooyoung suddenly appears. In front of them he turns into a human, completely naked but unashamedly so. Hongjoong has grown quite used to it—the nudity. It doesn’t particularly faze his anymore, why should it? They’re all naked under their clothes, it’s nothing strange.

“There you are!” Wooyoung hisses. “I’ve been waiting. They had us circled and Yeosang just disappeared, leading them away from me.“

“That stupid, reckless little—“ Hongjoong is cursing under his breath, terrified.

“What about the rogue werewolf, any sightings?” Mingi asks.

Wooyoung bites the inside of his cheek. “It was there, running by Yeosang’s side.”

Seonghwa’s face darkens. “So it’s true. It’s a shadow-wolf.”

“A what?” Mingi asks, confused.

“I’ll explain you later,” San promises. “What do we do?”

Before any of them can answer, the sound of a gun going off s _wooshes_ through the forest, alarming nocturnal birds and critters, a wave of rustling leaves and cracking branches follows it. In the near, absolute darkness, no direct knowledge from where exactly the sound came from, it’s terrifying and blood-curdling. Like frozen, Hongjoong stands in the middle of the woods, bow and arrow ready.

The helpless and painful howl of a wolf follows. Hongjoong _knows_ , he knows now. The pain, the sorrow, the revenge.

“ _Shit_ ,” Mingi mutters. He has one hand firmly around Hongjoong’s bicep, as he got scared by the gun, attaching himself to the closest, comforting thing. “Do you think…? No, never mind, I shouldn’t ask.” He swallows, stepping away from Hongjoong.

“They could have shot the shadow-wolf,” says San.

Wooyoung shakes his head. “You know they didn’t.”

San clenches his fists, averting his gaze. “I’ll… I’ll get Mingi out of here.”

Hongjoong still can’t move, his heart is beating loudly in his ears as he understands this boy with golden eyes and golden waves a little bit better. He wanted to know Yeosang, know his secrets, this is one of them, he supposes. To know someone, one has to learn not to judge harshly.

“ _Go_!” Seonghwa’s sudden yell makes him blink, surprised. Wooyoung is already in wolf form, his black fur glittering blue in the waning moonlight, his brown eyes are attentively watching the woods around them. “Go find Yeosang! We will take care of them!”

Hongjoong swallows, still frozen. Seonghwa slaps his shoulders, it galvanizes him, his whole body waking up from his shock and fear.

Without another look at the two werewolves, he sprints.

Breathless, his lungs burning—like little knives piercing the flesh below his ribs—and his heart beating wilder than ever before, Hongjoong runs through the forest in search of his beloved wolf. He can’t lose him.

His mind conjures Yeosang’s cheeky smile up; it floats in the darkness of the woods surrounding Hongjoong, like a beacon. He will not abandon him again. He’s learned from his past mistakes and his selfish, careless heart.

As if tethered by unnameable and unknown forces, Hongjoong’s legs bring him to the clearing with the huge rock, the waning moon shines down on a body lying right in the center: it’s a wolf, fur a light brown, a deep gun wound right by the rips.

Hongjoong stumbles to a stop, his heart doubling over in fear.

“Child of the wolves,” comes the voice of a woman. Hongjoong startles, badly, and looks around. There’s no one around them. “Child of the wolves, protector of the valley, you’ve accomplished your duty,” she carries on. “It’s time you rest, your spirit is free to roam the forest— _our forest_. You’ve done well, and as a reward, I shall free you of all that weight on your shoulders.”

Hongjoong sees a nearly translucent shimmer hovering over Yeosang’s unconscious body. Everything falls into place, piece by piece—his dreams, Yeosang’s return to the valley, the shadow-wolf.

Hongjoong freezes for a moment, then his whole body wakes up at once.

“ _No_!” he shouts. He surges forward, reaching Yeosang’s body. Hongjoong drops to his knees. “You can’t take him!”

“Pardon?” The woman seems very surprised by Hongjoong’s outburst, almost as if she wasn’t expecting him to hear her.

“You can’t take him,” he repeats, shaking his head. “ _You can’t_.”

The woman stares at him, a cold shiver travels through him.

“You… love him,” she says, although it sounds like a question, like she can’t quite believe this.

Hongjoong’s breath hitches. “I do,” he confesses. He hopes Yeosang can hear them as much as he hopes this conversation stays between him and the translucent woman.

“My child… My beautiful, terrible child,” she says in awe, pondering something. Hongjoong doesn’t really understand it, he’s focused on the bullet wound and how best he can remove it before it’s too late. “I never thought I’d see the day someone falls in love with one of them…” She laughs, it sounds almost cruel. “Very well.” The shimmering light vanishes, darkness covering the clearing again, except for the waning moon watching them from above.

Hongjoong jerks back as an intense coldness surrounds Yeosang, passing through his entire body. A bright, white light seems to burst from the wolf.

“ _No, no, no._ ” Hongjoong shields himself from the light, terrified that when he looks at the spot again, Yeosang will be gone.

Then, the coldness is gone as is the light, and the clearing in the forest returns to its usual summer soundtrack of singing cicadas and hooting owls. Hongjoong dares to remove his arm from in front of his eyes.

Yeosang is staring back at him, in his human form. He looks a little pale and tired, but he’s alive. Hongjoong swallows, crawling closer. He’s incredibly tired himself.

“Hey,” Yeosang whispers hoarsely.

With one hand fisted into the humid grass, the other gently holding Yeosang’s face, Hongjoong bends down, kissing him with tears springing in his eyes.

“I thought… I thought I lost you—again,” he whispers, undone.

Yeosang shifts, sitting up with difficulty.

“Not this time,” he says, brushing Hongjoong’s hair out of his face. He smiles. “You saved me. I let go of my resentment.”

Hongjoong doesn’t have the words, he isn’t even quite sure what just happened. Yeosang takes the burden of finding the appropriate words away from him as he leans upward and kisses Hongjoong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!!! i have no idea what this fic was tbh i just wanted to write hongsang and was feeling very nostalgic about forests, and this happened??? most of this was completely unplanned, and i might have left some questions unanswered in case i ever want to return to this universe (for San&Mingi's story, and Wooyoung's), nonetheless i hope you enjoyed it!! 💛
> 
> -[twitter](https://twitter.com/hhhjoong)  
> -[curiouscat](https://curiouscat.qa/mist_)


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